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 fairphone I understand the issue
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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.
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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
Shame there is no Graphene OS support for it
The biggest downside of Fairphone IMO is that they don't maintain their hardware support in LineageOS and for the retail product then branch development off, add a bit of custom branding and adapt whatever Google requires these days. It would greatly improve custom ROM support in general.
Graphene isn't the best choice for everything. It doesn't have good backup solutions nor device to device backup or anything solid for complete snapshots and when restoring your so called backups you'll realize what all it truly lacks.
It's hardened and has a lot of security and privacy features but none of that matters if your opsec is bad, or it's feature set doesn't match your threat model. I am not knocking it at all. It just isn't the white knight for every case.
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Went to buy one but they don't sell to USA any more. THAT will tell off tRump.
I wish they could implement the parts of the Pixel phones that allow GrapheneOS to be used.
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If they just didn't drop the headphone jack.
How else would they push their mediocre reviewed Bluetooth headsets and ear buds?
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That's cool. Let me know when it gets support for GrapheneOS and finds it's headphone jack again.
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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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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.
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I'm using this phone right now and I love it. it feels solid. Im using a degoogled ROM and it just works, there seems to be a lot of people pressing for graphene os specifically and discrediting the phone for what it is. its so easy to take apart and cheaply repair its great. it's perfect for folk who want a decent smartphone that you dont have to worry about being thrown around. sure it's not perfect but it is still a very good
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Please get through the FCC and open sales in the USA before Fairphone 6 is made.
I really don't want to buy another unrepairable phone.
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I hope Graphene eventually shifts to support the fairphones. Doubtful, but it'd be perfect
No, it's the other way around. Fairphone needs to implement the things Graphene requires.
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Only 400€ to go until I can afford it.
I really wish this was available in the US. I've found myself able to hang on to devices longer and longer. So this would be perfect. I'm only charging my battery to 80% and discharging it to 30% before charging it again just to prolong the life of the battery because that's the first thing that dies on most devices. Having a user replaceable battery again would be an absolute godsend.
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I would totally be interested if they had solid Linux support, such as postmarketOS or mobian. Those systems continue to get updates long after most Android devices stop supplying updates, so it would fit really well with a repairable phone. It shouldn't be the default, but it would be awesome if they helped the Linux phone community make it the best supported hardware for the various Linux phone projects.
According to the postmarketOS wiki, audio is completely broken, so you have to use Bluetooth. That kind of sucks.
Bring back the headphone jack & we'll be happy.
Next up, make the phone compatible with Linux OSs
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Aaaand it's impossible to buy in the US. Even if USians want to do the right thing, we're not permitted.
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Can even get it pre-installed with /e/OS to minimise snooping by Google
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