I am leaning toward Fairphone to replace my Apple.
Has anyone tried loading KDE Plasma Mobile onto one of these?
The Fairphone team has tried to help with mainline Linux support: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairphone-fp6)
Is plasma mobile any good?
I’m interested in this brand and their Gen 6. I kind of wish I was in the market for a phone. Unfortunately I bought a used Pixel 6 three years ago and everything is just fine with it 😄
My 5yo Pixel 6 inflated just last Friday. I panic-ordered a Pixel 9a, but since Google didn’t fulfill my supplier’s shipment, I cancelled and switched to a Fairphone today. It’ll arrive tomorrow. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
You can change the battery of Pixel 6, it’s not insanely hard.
It’s popped open and deformed.
I replaced the power button and battery on my android phone. Managed to fix it by watching YouTube tutorials.
I’ve been running a Fairphone 6 for about 6 months now and it’s by far the buggiest phone I’ve ever used. I’d love to keep using it until the security updates stop but it’s already such a miserable experience already I can’t imagine how bad it’ll be in a few years time.
Seriously? Like what did you put on it? I love mine. I basically removed MicroG and kept the basic ecosystem. Got Fdroid. Replaced voice recorder, calendar, call app with Fossify. Put an RSS feed on with Lemmy app, Peer tube, Searchix, and Tuta. Absolutely zero issues. You need to disable the MicroG call home though. Can you reset to factory and just use trusted apps?
If you’re miserable, then something is wrong.
I don’t have MicroG I’m just using the stock ROM with Play Services. I too replaced most the default apps with foss options with Fossify being a big chunk of them. It’s not the apps that are the issue, it’s the Fairphone software.
Since my original comment I’ve already bought a second hand Galaxy S25 Edge as I haven’t tried Samsung since the Galaxy S3. Not exactly the privacy focused experience I’d ideally like but the Fairphone is becoming unusable after only 3 months. There’s no way I’d be using it in 7 years.
I have had mine 3 months. Never going back. Samsung has a partnership with Google. They take all your data and.call home a lot. Start monitoring through NextDNS and start blocking the domains and you’ll see. I’d just reset.or reinstall and try again. Something sounds off.
I’ve already tried a reset and the issues persist. I’ve just lost faith with Fairphone. I took a photo yesterday, the preview in the camera app shows a photo has been taken. If i click the preview I get a “failed to load media” warning and if I open the gallery app or file manager the photo is nowhere to be seen. This simply isn’t good enough. They’ve been well known for buggy software all over the internet so I’m not entirely surprised.
It’s been fine for me
Can you elaborate on how it has been buggy? What kind of issues have you come across?
The most annoying bug for me currently is the camera will sometimes just not save photos. It’ll appear as though it has worked and then later when I go to look at the photo there’s just no sign of me ever taking anything.
The second biggest annoyance would be the touchscreen simply not working sometimes until I lock and unlock the device again.
Finally we have the seemingly random lack of charging where I’ll wake up some mornings to find it hasn’t been charging at all despite being plugged in all night.
There is an e/OS camera and another that came with mine. Consult the forums. I typically just use the one with the black icon. If there were not camera issues they might not have included both. It’s important to support the underdog if you can stand it. If not, that’s okay too though. The 3rd icon below is what I use.
If it supported GrapheneOS I would be using one too.
every post about fairphone, there’s always one comment like this
I’m running e/os on my FP6 and it’s a great de googled alternative!
/e/ os is not degoogled
How is it not degoogled?
Calls home to Google constantly ootb https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm
Where does it say that specifically? The table is not mobile friendly.
According to e/os themselves, it is degoogled…
I’m using GrapheneOS on a Pixel 7a which I bought just to flash it. Google Android just ran on it for the obligatory update before the flashing. It’s just very secure and that’s what I like about it. I’m not so sure about /e/ even though it’s being supported by semi prominent people here in DACH.
For me any concerns about e/os are overshadowed by buying one of the most sustainable and “ethical” phones there are currently available, and not supporting google.
By using /e/ os you are supporting google because /e/ os is not degoogled
Buying a Pixel isn’t automatically supporting Google. You can get them secondhand.
You’re indirectly helping Google though. If the second hand market is better for Pixels than other devices because of Graphene, then people are more willing to buy Pixels, so Google sells more of them.
The secondhand market for GrapheneOS users is a fraction of a fraction of Google’s overall Pixel sales. Saying you’re supporting Google by using GrapheneOS is a stretch even by the loosest definition and only serves to detract from literally the best OS you can use for privacy and security.
Yeah unfortunate that it doesn’t, I imagine the market overlap for those two things is high
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
The thing with pattern unlock is that it is inherently less secure than the other 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 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.
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.
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.
I’ve been using a Fairphone 4 for a couple weeks, and I like it so far. This is the way phones should be made. I eventually found replacements for most of my Google stuff. It’s just sad that my government burned our bridges with trade, so any replacement parts I import will be expensive.
So long as it’s affordable. I’m not paying more than £250 for a mobile phone, even that’s on the high end of what I can justify for a phone.
I’m stuck using Chinese brands if I want a good, affordable phone, but they have so many intentional software issues.
Nothing’s perfect, but if I could get a better phone that doesn’t lock down stuff (it’s my phone after all, I’m in charge of my own life), and if it were at an affordable price point - unlike these crazies that think £1000 is a reasonable price for a phone (!!!), I’d jump on it <3
You’re more likely to get a price like that in CEX or Back market, with the added bonus that it’s ethical to reuse second hand.
The fairphone is always going to be more expensive than other phones because they ensure fair compensation of workers
yep, the “fair” isn’t exclusive to the customer.
Well they finally delivered a decent camera. That’s what made me buy one. It’s a step down from a Pixel 8 Pro but not a huge one.
I will have to consider Fairphone when I am looking for my next phone. Looking at their site, my only hesitation is about water resistance. I understand that repairability comes at the cost of making everything glued and sealed shut, but I drop my phone in water once every couple of years. If that risks killing it, it is not going to be a phone that will last long in my hands.
Have you considered not dropping your phone in water?
I have, but decided against it. I am clumsy and my hands are big enough to barely use my phone one handed (but not hold it securely when I do).
Hard to avoid when you have a toddler and dog bowls around…
Is it?
I feel like people have had toddlers and dog bowls for a long time, and that people in the past have been ableto keep certain things away from water successfully. Perhaps if you have increased opportunities to get the phone wet, you should take extra precautions.
It’s got a rating. Not sure if water resistant or proof. They didnplan for it to be in rainy environments. Also, phone is modular and repairable by design.
With an IP55 rating, I would assume it can resist a drop in water. As long as you don’t stare at it for multiple minutes and do get it out asap.
I would hope, but I would want to check reviews to be sure.
I want a Fairphone quite badly as my old s21 ultra is starting to reach the end of it’s useful life. But it not working on Verizon is an automatic dealbreaker because they are the only carrier that works in the rural areas I am always working in. Tmobile is next to useless, so looks like I am still stuck with stupid network lockin.
Not compatible with Verizon
Welp, that sucks. I’m not switching to T-Mobile. I’ve seen their infrastructure up close and personal after working on mixed carrier cell towers for years and that shit is absolutely third world by comparison.
If anyone is looking for a Canadian or international order, I just found this U.K. site which multiple threads of Reddit have been talking about. They offer shipping tracking.
https://www.clove.co.uk/products/fairphone-gen-6
https://www.reddit.com/r/fairphone/comments/kkd44p/is_there_a_way_to_get_a_fairphone_in_canada/
I 100% agree with the fact that there needs to be more phones you can easily fix but every time I see a headline like “I need a phone I can fix” I can’t help but think that y’all are incredibly clumsy and keep breaking your phones far too often 😅
I have gone through 2 batteries and a usb port instead of three phones
No… You need a phone you can fix if you don’t break your phone’s all the time. That’s how you use the same phone for 6 years, like my pixel 4a. I haven’t upgraded to another pixel because the newer ones all have some deal breaker, no SD card slot, or a non removable battery, or no 3.5 mm headphone port.
But if you keep a phone for 6 years, they need maintenance. A speaker stops working, the battery life drops to nothing, the touch screen digitizer fails, etc. And then you need to be able to open it up.
The battery is the first thing that tends to fail for me.
My phone is a few years old now and recently I wet it down on the inductive charger overnight and missed, so when I woke up it was at 20% battery. I decided that I’d let the battery drain to 0 before charging it, because AFAIK it’s still true that it’s good to do that occasionally so the battery management software can recalibrate things. So I used it for a few minutes and it very quickly dropped to 9% battery, and then it hung out there for like 10 minutes without moving. I gave up on actively using it to drain the battery and just put on a YouTube live stream and put the phone down. Eventually it moved past 9% battery and slowly drained down to 1%. And at 1% it lasted at least another half an hour just sitting there playing full screen video.
From my experience with previous phones, there’s a chance that the battery management software might be able to tune things so that it is more predictable. But, if I’m unlucky it’s already in its death spiral. It’s a shame because it’s still a fairly decent phone. I might want to upgrade anyhow, but it sucks that once the battery goes bad the phone is almost e-Waste. I’ve used a local guy who does repairs to change the battery in a tablet a few years ago, and it went from having horrible battery life to having good-as-new battery life. But, while the battery is still decent on it, the model is so old it’s no longer getting any software updates, which means a lot of apps simply won’t run on it. So, even if I replace the battery in this phone, it’s getting more and more useless by the day.
If I could load another OS on it, I could find a use for it. I have headless computers and it would be great if this could be a temporary screen / keyboard for those. It could be a dedicated bike computer. I could use its camera and monitor 3d prints. But, none of that is possible if the manufacturer says that it’s too old for them to bother with and their app store no longer has apps for it.
Agreed on all counts. Also, I truly miss my 4a. I kept it for nearly 5 years until Google killed it’s utility with that update despite claiming that my IMEI was excluded by the battery issue/payout offer.
That is actually a very fair point!
I want GrapheneOS more than repairability, personally. I hope the Fairphone + GrapheneOS combination is possible some day…
Fairphone is the sort of phone for people who think LineageOS with an unlocked bootloader is secure made by a company who has sincerely promised to make things better but hasn’t substantially improved security (especially in how often they push security patches). Grapheneos is not a brand name you can just apply to give a phone more reputation, its an OS that represents the highest standard of security.
The Graphene devs explicitly only support Pixels. Sticking with Graphene means continuing to give Google the profits from your hardware.
/e/OS is not bad as an alternative. The system wide ad and tracker blocking is nice.
Sticking with Graphene means continuing to give Google the profits from your hardware
GrapheneOS only supports Google Pixel because they are the most secure Android phones, with open-source images and 5+ years of security updates.
You don’t have to give money to Google. I got my Pixel 4a and my mother’s 6a from second-hand sellers.Sure, but then you are also not funding Google’s competition in order to help improve choice.
Buying second hand might make you feel better because you didn’t directly fund Google, but you’re still helping them maintain their position.
«Funding competition» means giving money to Chinese State companies, for most consumers.
Most of the american companies are using Chinese manufacturing for much of the devices. Fairphone is European, but same manufacturing sources.
In 2026, as a Canadian… Choosing between a country that is adopting nazi practices and threatening us with annexation, and one who has a questionable history but is overall doing more for climate change and global stability right now than the other… The choice is easy. Anything but american.
I just bought a refurbished (as new) Pixel 9 to use Grapheneos.
Saved ~50% and didn’t pay Google.
Genius! That is exactly how I buy my slaves
I’m sorry, your what??? 😳
Agree, buying a used pixel made by slave labor wage is still morally grey. And buying them used increases their market value, therefore people can find buying a new pixel easier as they can sell it for more later.
What the fuck dude
That wasn’t as funny as you thought it would be.
This is a big issue that the fairphone doesn’t have its dtb open yet. It’s not easy to build ROM for it. Despite their core claim of sustainability, without addressing the blobs, it remains just a tad more convenient for green minded people. We need a full Fairphone.
And besides that, fairphone is just greenwashing when it comes to repairability, good luck finding parts for previous generations.
You can still get cameras and screens for the Fairphone 2 from Fairphone. No they’re not making more, but they also have never said “unlimited support forever”.
That the process doesn’t require prying apart glue alone makes it significantly more repairable than any other mainstream phone.
That demonstrably false by just going to the store…
I don’t know why people keep saying that.
I think it is because 90% of company sustainability is simply greenwashing.
Fairphone also had the whole “fairbuds” thing where they released tws earbuds (and then removed the headphone jack) and supported them for under 2 years before throwing them away and they are completely non-repairable, then acted like they didn’t exist.
The new fairbuds are 10x better though, but I have heard the sound on both of their headphones is mediocre at best.
That’s fair and all, and I see your point. A 100% “fair” phone is the end-goal.
Butin the battle against corporate douche-baggery, if we keep making perfect the enemy of good, we’ll never get anywhere.
They said “possible someday”, not “possible currently”.
/e/OS is not bad as an alternative. The system wide ad and tracker blocking is nice.
I switched to e/os on a couple of motorolas that supported it and it’s great so far.
The comparisons to GrapheneOS are fair to some degree, but also not. Graphene is meant to be privacy and security hardened, whereas GrapheneOS, while it is more secure than regular android, is more concerned with privacy hardening. The biggest misconception people have seems to be thinking that privacy and security are the same thing; and while that is true on the surface level, security (a la GrapheneOS) goes much deeper.
So while my phone may not be as “hack resistant” as a GrapheneOS, it’s degoogled and very protective of tracking, which is what I’m primarily concerned with. So I’m happy.
I just wish I could afford a fairphone in Canada.
FYI, I think your third mention of Graphene was meant to be /e/OS.
Whoops. Thanks for the catch.
Google makes way more on services so I don’t think they are making that much off the phones.
What maskes you want Graphene over e/OS? I’m not so familiar with how they feel.
Graphene modifies AOSP for much more security.
E.g.
- you can disable USB data at a hardware level
- Receives Kernel updates even faster than Google’s phones
- uses a different memory allocator, hardened_malloc
- changes the way zygote launches apps, so ASLR actually works
- doesn’t allow apps to ptrace themselves
- disables JIT per-app
- disable network access per-app
I dont think e/OS is as security oriented, more privacy oriented
Thanks for sharing. For someone who is not so well versed in these technicalities, what does that mean for the user? That you’re more susceptible to fraud and hacking and malware?
Basically GrapheneOS is for people worried about law enforcement or some state actors trying to access their phone using some commercial tools or 0 day exploits. It’s useful for journalist, lawyers, activists and so on.
Average users don’t really have to worry about those things. It’s unlikely that someone will try to hack you using such tools, you most probably don’t have any data wort protecting and it’s quicker and easier for you to just unlock your phone than to spend days/weeks/months in jail trying to protect your data.
What average user should care about is removing Google from their phones and blocking trackers. Other ROMs like iode also come without Google and have better tools than GrapheneOS for blocking trackers. They are as secure as any other Android phone.
Average users don’t really have to worry about those things.
That’s true, until it isn’t. What’s legal and moral now can change in a flash. Having a phone that’s resistant to software infiltration isn’t a bad thing.
A big thing is gOS not using JIT compiling. So, app updates are pretty slow but this kills a lot of malware exploits.
So if I were to choose graphene over eOS it would mainly be to be more protected from malware?
You would choose it for security hardening in general. E.g. it is harder for malware to infect, harder for unauthorized parties to gain access to data when the phone is locked, etc.
That and privacy, you also have a lot of control over what each app can do with gOS’s permissions settings vs standard ROM and most of that is enabled by default. Can break some apps, especially banking related. I have 122 installed, of that three gave me a little bit of trouble where I had to disable some protections to get them functional. DeGoogled by default, I use microG for some limited Play services to get stuff like Youtube Revanced working.
From a user’s perspective, when you install an app, you can:
- Determine if that app is allowed to access the internet.
- If it needs access to your contacts, you can share which of your contacts, it can see (or none at all)
- If it needs access to your files, you can determine which files/photos/music it sees (or none at all, but the application still believes it has access to everything)
There are a bunch of other, security features it provides, but from a “normal user” experience, the ability to take control of your data is probably one of the most impactful.
It is possible to do similar things with other CFW, but AFAIK, graphene is the only one to cleanly integrate it as a polished feature of the ROM.
edit: fix formatting
I see, and it can’t be installed on Fairphone?
No, the Graphene developers insist on hardware functionality that is not present on the Fairphone.
No, currently only on Pixels. Plans to support another future platform exist.
Hmm, in mean time I prefer buying Fairphone over supporting Google.
