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I want a phone I can actually fix, and Fairphone’s record growth shows the world does too
(www.androidcentral.com)
this post was submitted on 10 Feb 2026
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The choice of only supporting Pixels comes from GrapheneOS's side, not Fairphone. Fairphone got some great ROMs support, and even have an official partnership with one of them (e/OS).
I love Fairphones, but GrapheneOS developers are very clear on why they son't support phones other than Pixels. If other phones complied with those requirements, they would support them. I really hoped the OEM they're working with to support from another brand would be Fairphone, but the most educated guess I've seen is Motorola
GrapheneOS developers are quite dickish about what they are willing to implement and how they treat their users. They work under the assumption that GrapheneOS is for people afraid of being hacked (like actively targeted by state level actors) and refuse to add anything that in their view compromises security. So for example they refuse to add pattern unlock because they think it's less secure than PIN which is silly because I can just use '0000' PIN which is as insecure as any pattern. It's the same with supporting other phones. Personally I'm not worried about police trying to hack my phone, I just want deGoogled system with tracker protection. GrapheneOS devs don't care. It's all or nothing with them. I would recommend iode over Graphene to anyone not as paranoid as the devs.
They can be dickish about several things, but they will implement whatever they want, it's their project LOL! They actually develop a mobile operating system for people afraid of being hacked, and with the utmost security in mind.
The thing with pattern unlock is that it is inherently less secure than the other options, despite the fact that you can use one of the other options in bad ways (like the '0000' PIN). Expecting them to change this is using the lowest common denominator possible, which is against their philosophy.
You do have other options if you want to deGoogle, like LineageOS, that supports a much wider range of devices (altough the extent of deGoogling can be limited). It's good we have one ROM (among others) with paranoid devs - we have more options
Does Graphene scramble the keypad between PIN entries? If not, it's functionally the same as a pattern unlock.
It gives you the option to
That's good then. A lot of stuff uses the standard numberpad.
That's exactly what I said. GrapheneOS devs target very specific group of users and most privacy focused users will be served better by other ROMs. They can do whatever they want but they clearly don't care about wider community and I think wider community shouldn't care about them as much as it does.
Yes but also no, the fairphone doesn't meet the extensive list of requirements required to maintain the goal of GrapheneOS - List of requirements for devices
Some of those requirements are really hard to get for non-Google devices. EOM don't get updates as early as Google engineers gets. It takes time to validate everything, especially since their don't control their own hardware.
Those requirements are more a way to not appear like dicks by telling that they'll only supports Pixels.
No, the Fairphone hardware platform doesn't meet minimal security features of the GOS project. You could say they chose not to compromise on security rather.
Which is alright. It's their project after all. I find myself very happy from my Murena Fairphone (except the launcher, which I hate), so I'll probably be a good Fairphone/Murena client for the years to come.
You could switch the launcher, right?
I did, I use Lawnchair.
Oh ok, cool 👍
I know that. So I stand corrected that I should have written "If it were supported by GrapheneOS..."
Doesn't change, that its a show stopper for me, though.
That's fair. We all have our needs, and I find mine in Fairphone + e/OS, which is nice. And when I upgrade, I get to give my parents an almost new, still supported phone, which is nice.