I am writing right now from my degoogled Fairphone 4 running /e/OS.
I would buy again in a heartbeat.
It’s definitely not the most bang for your bucks. But it’s good enough for any use, it already outlived my last 3 phones, and it shows no sign of giving up (even when I was using the Google infested OS a few months back).
I’d recommend it.
I’m writing from F4 as well. The longer I own it, the more I’m impressed. Fixability has saved me replacing the phone twice now (I dropped it on the screen, and got cement in the usb charger).
If you’re just considering spec, its fairly pricey, but the repairability easily makes up for it. Have a pair of their bluetooth headphones too which I love.
Question for OP: how did you find installing /e/OS? I have android still but am thinking about trying to install.
I use Arch and am fairly familiar with a terminal.
Avoid their Easy Installer, it just doesn’t work. And pay a lot of attention to the anti downgrade feature of the Bootloader. It’s described in their guide for the FP4.
Outside of that, just follow the guide, it was pretty straightforward.
It was honestly way more work to backup everything I had on the phone…
Does everything work on /e/OS? Like banking and etc expected uses for daily use.
tl;dr it works really great for me, but there is no complete guarantee for the future, if that’s not acceptable stay away.
So far, yes, at least for me. Telegram, WhatsApp, Netflix, banking, you name it. I have apps from three different banks, and they are perfect. Even the itsme app of the belgian government works a-ok. But there is no guarantee that this will always be the case.
Notably Revolut has embraced enthusiastically the new Play Integrity system, and does not work at all on any third party ROM since late autumn. I was not a customer, but it has pissed many people off.
It is not impossible that this might happen with more banks in the future.
The App of my German mutuality didn’t work at the beginning (refused to log me in due to “issues with my device”) but after a later update now works fine. Who know how long that will be.
Some Google things you simply loose, such as Google Pay, I also have had very mixed success with Chromecast.
Android Auto works, but refuses to use any other navigation app than GMaps and Waze. I tried installing Mapy, HereWeGo, Organic, Magic Earth… But it doesn’t work. I half understand the reason, but I haven’t figured out a solution yet.
I also couldn’t get Slay the Spire to work, I guess it depends on some Google Play Games feature. That’s probably for the better, I already spend too much time playing Shattered Pixel Dungeon, which is an open source roguelike available on F-Droid. Highly recommend.
People should never trust Apple
They slowed down their iPhones on purpose to encourage people to buy new ones.
I agree that nobody should trust any corpo, including Apple, but there’s nuance to that story that never gets mentioned in these discussions.
Apple used to slow down devices whose batteries were starting to fail, in order to reduce the likelihood that your device suddenly turns off before the battery reads as empty. Simply put, if the battery couldn’t guarantee a certain power output down until empty, they’d throttle the CPU.
The notably scummy part here is that they didn’t tell users, and it wasn’t an option you could change. To make up for it, they had a cheap battery replacement program for several years and informed users about the issue, and I believe it’s optional now?
This was also several years before other manufacturers started offering OS support timelines comparable to Apple’s. Apple still let you update a 6 year old iPhone when others were doing 3 years for flagships. Fairphone of course was an exception.
You should still get a Fairphone if it meets your actual needs or a Pixel if you need GrapheneOS, but if you’re a non technical user who actually can make the most of a flagship, I’d recommend an iPhone over Samsung (just as expensive as Apple and these are the guys who put ads in TV UI nowadays) or Google (questionable stability with the Tensor chips in some iterations) at least. 5 years ago I’d recommend OnePlus, but those days are over. The stock ROM is now ass. I keep my old 7 pro around to play Real Racing 3 and with a custom rom I’m like 3 android versions beyond OEM support and it’s actually super smooth. But I won’t recommend it to a non techy user.
PS: I’m an Apple user, but not a diehard fan boy. I make comments explaining or defending them often because I feel Apple gets way more flak than their competitors who are usually equally scummy.
I really wanted one but it’s hardware isn’t supported by grapheneOS. I wish these two companies would partner up, that would be the best of both worlds.
Might not be the same, but they do partner with Murino to offer an /e/os degoogled alternative.
You mean Murena?
Yup! Completely butchered that spelling, sorry for anyone who tried to google them.
