Still like the idea behind it and wish there was support for GrapheneOS (going even further than /e/o) as well as better camera quality but this is the price we have to pay for flexibility and sustainability I think. Like the concept here but never tried to go with one so far.
this post was submitted on 15 Apr 2025
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Great idea, but will never take down here in south America
People know that all these import parts and replacements are not exactly easy to pay for, even less to find. They need a cheap reliable phone that will at least handle day to day for years
I mean come on, the average cellphone user here is still using the equivalent of a Moto G2 or Samsung J2 and thats stretching it.
An S8 is still seen like luxury in here. And I'm not even going into iphones.
2nd hand pixels beats any midrange phone at the same price. Sent some with GOS on them to a friend in Nicaragua. Quite instantly he broke the screen , bought new screen on ebay that shipped directly to bumfuck nowhere on milestone address. But yea with fair phone I understand the issue
the average cellphone user here is still using the equivalent of a Moto G2 or Samsung J2
I guess it depends on where you live in LATAM. Most of my friends and acquaintances own newer iPhones and fancy Androids. I'm the only one stuck with a G8. 😅
Yeah most people in LATAM is poor as fuck
You are right, but people lost their minds for smartphone war race, where most of changes were camera related (still shitty) and sort of fomo.
Went to buy one but they don't sell to USA any more. THAT will tell off tRump.
Fairphone 6 approaching? They are great, the project is amazing and I wish every brand would be like them in terms of caring about users and environment
I do own a Fairphone 5 as my new company phone, I used an iPhone 13 mini before. Sadly I have to say that I don't agree with the "they are great", while a Fairphone 5 is a totally capable and usable phone it lacks a lot of the lifestyle appeal that a modern smartphone brings. The Fairphone is quite laggy, the camera is not very good and since Google focusses a lot on the pixel line the stock android experience on the Fairphone lacks a lot of comfort features. I would still recommend it for everyone willing to look beyond these downsides and just uses their phone for communication. Sadly that's not the majority of people
I've owned the 4, for a couple of years. Was really excited to get one.
Parts have been unavailable for a long time when I needed them. The battery is pretty dead after 2 years meanwhile my pixel which is about 5 years old still going strong. The os is the buggiest experience I've ever had, sluggish, going from portrait the landscape kills UI formatting if it switches to power save it'll skip a video. Boot loops constantly.
Never again I'm afraid it's neat I could fix things with it so quickly but they fail hard past that.
Example navigation buttons have just covered the voyager ui
Navigation buttons covering the Voyager UI is an Android/Voyager bug. It has happened on my last two phones.
It works fine on all my test devices.
I just got it to happen by flipping my phone back and forth
Weird! Rotating is working fine for me.
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Can even get it pre-installed with /e/OS to minimise snooping by Google
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The hardware is good and I like the idea in principle but Fairphone's support and software QA is dreadful and you need to hope you never need the former because of problems with the latter. My FP5 was bricked by an update they pushed out and after six weeks of trying to get a solution from their support (four weeks of which they didn't respond at all) I ended up claiming on insurance and buying a Pixel. According to the forums this problem is far from unique to me.
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Fairphone don't sell replacement mainboards, presumably to stop people building phones from parts but they look very serviceable in other respects.
I really want this to come to the US as well..
Is this phone also more secure?
The problem we are running into right now is Apple and Google are colluding with the US government over fascism and they are supporting their Nazi regime
They have all the power and they can change all of these services overnight, they can track you and everything and you will have no idea and no way to get rid of it
We really need an open replacement. Phones are now used for everything
Is this phone also more secure?
Probably not.
Apple & Google have spent considerable amounts of time building out hardware security infrastructure for their products that I find it extremely unlikely Fairphone would have been able to match.
For example, the popular alternative Android OS GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixels, because: (Emphasis added by me)
"There are currently no other devices meeting even the most basic security requirements while running an alternate OS. GrapheneOS is very interested in supporting a non-Pixel brand, but the vast majority of Android OEMs do not take security seriously. Samsung takes security almost as seriously as Google, but they deliberately cripple their devices when unlock them to install another OS and don’t allow an alternate OS to use important security features. If Samsung permitted GrapheneOS to support their devices properly, many of their phones would be the closest to meeting our requirements. They’re currently missing the very important hardware memory tagging feature, but only because it’s such a new feature"
If even Samsung, the only other phone brand on the market they consider close to meeting their standards, doesn't support every modern hardware security feature, and deliberately cripples their security for alternate OS's, as a multi billion dollar company, I doubt Fairphone has custom-built hardware security mechanisms for their phones to the degree that Google has.
Well yeah, because why would phone companies care? Consumers buy devices based on camera and display quality, not for security, privacy, etc. I just had a chat w/ a coworker about a Chinese device with an incredible camera and big battery, and I highly doubt it does anything but the bare minimum for security. It's a cool piece of hardware, but a no-go for anyone that cares even a little about security updates.
I have a Pixel device because it has a long SW support cycle (Google promises at least 7 years), and I use GrapheneOS because it removes Google's spyware crap. I'm not married to GrapheneOS or Pixel devices, I just need something where the software support will last at least longer than my desire to keep the device (about 4-5 years for me). I've ditched each of my last phones largely because they ran out of security update support, and that sucks.
I'd prefer a Linux phone w/ decent security features, but they don't meet my minimum standards for things working (just need phone features to work properly, don't need apps). The moment a Linux phone comes out than actually works properly and has reasonable security, I'll switch. The FairPhone could be that, but it's not, so I don't have one.
how is pixel with graphene os ? does it completely remove all google spyware shit? or do they have some sort of hardware backdoor?
the reason I ask is because i have a motorola right now and it pisses me off immensely ... there is this notification they keep pushing, "Activate Live Lock screen" which i don't even know what it is, some background pictures crap. I uninstalled this app, but the notification remains. Like it's not there always but keeps coming back every few days. this has been going on for months and i got so pissed i decided to contact support and complain there. they said, something along the lines of, we can connect remotely and do it for you. ( like disable, but they can't disable because i went through every option on the phone, it cannot be disabled, it's just bloatware) but their "we can do it for you remotely" got me thinking, backdoors, backdoors everywhere.
now i want a new phone lol and one that can support a custom firmware but installing custom firmwares on pretty much all phones is a nightmare.
but i also hate buying anything google, hence my question.
Understand your worries. I can say that GOS is the gold standard of privacy phones , nothing beats it. Calyx comes in 2nd. A new install of graphene has a browser, pdf viewer sms app and that's about it. Use as you wish , with secured bootloader and zero google stuff. And I think it's the easiest install of any , anyone can do it. And 2nd hand phones are available
thanks, this sounds great. i've installed a few custom firmwares but like a decade ago and i wanted to install one on my motorola recently and was just perplexed at the complexity of it all, i might be getting old. i mean i can follow instructions, but just so many things can go wrong, don't do this, softbrick, don't do that, hardbrick ... honestly, the instructions were well written but unorganized a bit, just put me off.
i think i might like GOS tho, sounds great and 2nd hand pixel 8 or so are cheap enough so i'll probably give it a go.
Yea a lot have changed in 10 years in the cat and mouse game. GOS is a completely different thing. Want to unlock or unlock bootloader on a Motorola = 2 pages instructions in different xda threads. On a pixel? fastboot oem unlock done. And that's just because I'm old school , GOS have a webinstaller were I think you don't even need to touch the terminal.
how is pixel with graphene os ?
Good?
By default, there's no Google Play Services or any Google apps whatsoever. What you do have is a handful of utilities and a minimal app store that gives you the option to install Google Play Services and a few other apps. Or you can use the browser (Vanadium, a Chromium fork w/ some security options enabled) to download an alternative app store (F-Droid, Aurora, etc). They recently added Accrescent to the built-in app store as well, and I see 12 apps in that app store. I think by default there are 6 apps installed? (Messaging, PDF Viewer, Vanadium, Info, Auditor, and the App Store). I can't remember which I had to install manually since I set it up a few months ago.
So yes, I think they thoroughly remove Google's stuff from the default install.
Most Android apps seem to work (i.e. installed through Aurora), though a few have issues without Google Play Services running or one of the security features. I use a separate profile for the apps I need that don't work w/o Google Play services, and I switch profiles as needed. That way I don't have Google Play Services running at all unless I actually need it.
alright thanks for the extensive answer, this sounds great. i like the two profiles setup. and i didn't even know about aurora store ( i am out of the loop i know :) ) looks like this could be my next phone, and previous gen looks great enough, i don't need the latest bells and whistles, pixel 8 would be great.
Cool!
I'm happy to answer any other questions.
BTW, Aurora is just an alternative frontend to the Play Store, it has the same apps, but you can use an anonymous profile instead of logging in with a Google account.
Agree. Calyx is also an option when GOS support ends , then lineage etc. Wish we had good working Linux phones but I have high hopes my pixel 7 will be my last android
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