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Fairphone 3 Now Available With 'de-Googled' Android /e/OS (techcrunch.com) 66

Posted by BeauHD from the dreams-do-come-true dept.
joestar writes: Fairphone, the European manufacturer of mobile phones with a reduced environmental impact, has announced a partnership to offer /e/OS, the most "de-Googled" and pro-privacy Android OS, on their latest model Fairphone 3. An interesting move that reminds me of the recent introduction of the Google-free Huawei Mate 30. A pithy explainer of its "privacy by design ecosystem" -- and the point of "Android without Google" -- further notes: "We have removed many pieces of code that send your personal data to remote servers without your consent. We don't scan your data in your phone or in your cloud space, and we don't track your location a hundred times a day or collect what you're doing with your apps."

According to TechCrunch, the e/OS variant of the Firephone 3 ships from May 6, priced at just under 480 euros -- "a 30 euro premium on the Googley flavor of Android you get on the standard Fairphone 3." The report adds that existing owners of the Fairphone 3 can manually install /e/OS gratis via an installer on its website.
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Fairphone 3 Now Available With 'de-Googled' Android /e/OS More

Fairphone 3 Now Available With 'de-Googled' Android /e/OS

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  • I want one of these, maybe it's time to upgrade. :)

    • Now all that's missing, is a N900/N950/PSION-style keyboard module, so it becomes actually useful. Aka a pocket PC. And not merely a smartphone. Cause I don't need an electronic legal guardian. I can think myself.

  • How is it more "degoogled" than, say, flashing your own Lineage without the gapps?

    • Re:Just curious, as I am unfamiliar with this fork (Score:5, Interesting)

      by donfede ( 6215 ) on Wednesday April 29, 2020 @09:47PM (#60006236) Homepage

      True.

      What's more, some XDA developers have expressed mixed feelings about the /e/ project. https://forum.xda-developers.c... [xda-developers.com]

    • To answer my own question, the marketing blurb about /e/OS, the most "de-Googled" and pro-privacy Android OS is basically a stupid marketing lie.

      The Netherlands-based device maker has partnered with France’s /e/OS to offer a “de-Googled” version of its latest handset, running an Android AOSP fork out of the box that’s itself built atop a fork of CyanogenMod (remember them?) — called LineageOS (via Engadget).

      Why do marketing types find it necessary to lie in such a stupid way is still a mystery, especially with a niche product that would be appealing to people that value honest attitude from the manufacturer.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        >To answer my own question, the marketing blurb about /e/OS, the most "de-Googled" and pro-privacy Android OS is basically a stupid marketing lie.

        Could be worse. Could be raining, like Apple's IOS, which doesn't even offer any reasonable potential of open source development.Where's the Linux/SIP phone?

      • > especially with a niche product that would be appealing to people that value honest attitude from the manufacturer.

        Undoing mod to amplify your point.

        I would *LOVE* an open phone from a vendor who is openly committing effort and wealth to supporting LineageOS.

        I will steer widely clear from a vendor who is being deceptive and claiming to be simultaneously pro-privacy.

        Yeah, right. Textbook anti-marketing. Trust is earned, not granted.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by DrXym ( 126579 )
      And at least a vanilla Lineage dist (this /e/OS is a fork) would let you install gapps if you wanted and has frequent updates that track with AOSP. Does the fork preclude that or break the phone in such a way that would prevent gapps from working?
    • > How is it more "degoogled" than, say, flashing your own Lineage without the gapps?

      Good point but...

      Your average Joe/Jane could not be bothered or does not have the skill to get Lineage onto a regular Android phone.
      It's not the simplest thing to do as I'm sure(?) you understand.

      So along comes someone who spots a marketing chance - good luck to them!
  • Hear! Hear! This is a great step towards making viable alternatives to the Coke/Pepsi binary of the mobile OS world and we need to cultivate more. So far, we have some variants of Android such as Replicant https://www.replicant.us/ [replicant.us] and is available for sale here: https://tehnoetic.com/ [tehnoetic.com] Unfortuantely, these are only for Europeans. For the record, you can de-Google a stock Android device to a point, here is one article: https://android.gadgethacks.co... [gadgethacks.com] and you can instead use something like F-Droid for you

    • Hear! Hear! This is a great step towards making viable alternatives to the Coke/Pepsi binary of the mobile OS world and we need to cultivate more.

      Good luck with that.

      The most fundamental problem that needs to be solved with a third contender is that there needs to be something that this mobile OS does, which is inadequately addressed by either iOS or Android, and that can't be readily replicated with version N+1 of either iOS or Android.

      It's going to be tough to make it a hardware thing; Android's got keyboards and styli and built-in IR blasters and projector add-ons, and all the other little hardware pieces that are all one niche or another.
      It's not privacy; Apple has a pretty good track record from a consumer standpoint, and for those who trust Google enough, Android has its own permissions stack that aren't used very much.
      It's not going to be a "free-as-in-freedom" thing; Android started pretty solidly open, but it's openness has gotten progressively more locked down with each iteration and nobody's cared.
      It's not going to be a performance thing; the 'fast enough' list of phones grows longer every year. The used market has got 'fast enough' phones for under $200 now, and $400 will get you a current-gen iPhone SE.

      But, let's say you figure out your secret sauce and make an OS that contains it. Great! Now you need to put it on hardware. You could throw it on XDA, but most Android phones have locked bootloaders, so your audience are 'people willing to void their warranty', and you'll have to go device-by-device, writing your own drivers as you go.
      Alternatively, you can make a Kickstarter project and try and roll your own hardware. So, you need to have enough people believe in your secret sauce to get your particular hardware, eschewing their carrier and a number of more established retailers. That's...going to be a tough sell. Even OnePlus hasn't cracked the top 5% globally (though it has pockets of popularity like India), and they're running Android.

      But you've solved all that. Now, you have people buying your phone with a shiny new OS. Where's Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok? Those apps need to exist on your platform. Microsoft had that problem; there were no shortage of very popular apps that weren't available for Windows Phone. Whatever your secret sauce is, it needs to work *and* allow for existing functionality. Even if you get the core social media apps, banks are unlikely to just up-and-write their apps for it. Also, you'll need some way to support Activesync if you want any of the corporate market. Linux has had this problem; no matter how good your OS is, the expectation that 'a web browser and a word processor is all anyone needs' is going to be fundamentally false.

      I haven't even broached the minefield of patents.

      So, yes...I would love a third horse in the race. If you have an idea, I'm really interested in hearing it....because when MS pours billions of dollars into the mobile market and then says 'nah' in some of its prime growth years, you know it's not an easy nut to crack.

      • iOS has an appalling privacy track record and it is also part of the Apple ecosystem. You have to pay for everything, get your device turned useless after an update, endure ads, and go through forced upgrades because of crappy hardware. Android is Google's baby, 'nuff said. Tethered to another evil empire. Yes, there is a Linux kernel at heart, but modified by Google so it has to phone home, load insecure apps, and literally turn you into a walking drone missile target--and that's no joke. Also, Google can

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
          GPs point was that while they agree with you that there should be a 3rd (or 4th etc) competitor, for all the reasons you listed, the average person does not care about those. You need the average person to buy your phone in order to get enough of a base to make it viable, otherwise, it ends up like Windows Phone and no longer exists.

        • What ads are you talking about in iOS? Yeah some third party apps you need to pay for, is that really a problem? What forced upgrades are you speaking of? Upgrades are never forced. I was making a comment the other day how my six year old iPhone just received an OS update. Do any Android carriers have that level of support?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by lgw ( 121541 )

      Hear! Hear! This is a great step towards making viable alternatives to the Coke/Pepsi binary of the mobile OS world and we need to cultivate more.

      It's worth pointing out that when this was called "Fire phone" no one wanted one. People don't want phones, they want apps. Amazon tried to build their own app store, and there just weren't many takers.

      An app store that's not a walled garden will fail because of all the malware. An app store that is a walled gardem is just more of the same. F-droid is useless for most people. A phone without Lyft and Uber and Tinder and Audible and whatever game is trending right now is useless to most people, It's en

  • Yesterday I checked whether the FairPhone supported Android 10, which has been out since September last year. But no. I really, really applaud Fairphone, but I do not understand why this alternative OS takes priority over Android 10.

  • ...the applications. I went to change my phone to /e/ but then found there was no way to install my banking app so I would have to change bank as well.

    I even contacted the bank and in reply the said,

    Thanks for getting in touch! Please note our app is only available in Google Pay for security reasons. You can not download in in another place.

    Have a great day,

    • Download it from Google Play, and then install it on your phone.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kbg ( 241421 )

        And how exactly are you supposed to "download" it from Google Play directly with out having Google Play?

        And yes I know about third party apk downloaders, but those are "third party" so you can't be sure you don't have a tampered version.

        • Software like Titanium Backup allows you to untie apps from the app store, and create backuo which are just apks. Those can than be installed normally.
          Huawei's backup software also creates apks.
          No need to put "download" in quotes. Installing an app obviously *does* download it. It is just in a not friendly way.
          I guess you could also use something (like Wireshark) on your home server to log the urls and requests between the phone and Play "Store", to then download the APK from the URL the phone pulled it fro

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by kbg ( 241421 )

            Yes obviously the app is downloaded, everything on the Internet is downloaded. But installing Wireshark and sniffing out the URL is not something the average user is going to do. The correct solution would be if the Google Play store would offer a secondary way to enable downloading of apk for those that don't have Google Play.

        • Get F-Droid and from there Aurora store.

          If you have trust issues there, compile it from source yourself. If you can't compile it yourself, you are obviously trusting all kinds of parties today for your software needs, in which case I think that F-Droid should be really low on the list of suspected providers.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by pjt33 ( 739471 )

      You probably can. Launch an Android emulator with Play Store, install the app, and copy the APK from the emulated SD card.

  • Better looking than the non-existent ugly Librem 5 phone by Purism that they failed to release.
  • On the home page of their website:

    <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/3.4.1/jquery.min.js"></script>

    Hmmm
  • Some manufacturer must be looking at launching one.

  • No thanks (Score:4, Funny)

    by nospam007 ( 722110 ) * on Thursday April 30, 2020 @07:16AM (#60007060)

    I'll wait for a de-Appled iOS version.

    • De-Appled would be a half-assed UX. Apple brought metaphors replacing hardware, firmware and commands with concepts implemented as software. Reimagine iOS first principles, eliminate modal iOS behaviors without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Files.app in iPadOS is the most glaring example of half-assed, second only to Split-screen.

      Arthur C. Clark third law states " any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". Kudos to the Apple T1 chip's seamless Bluetooth pairing; the

  • They've been "planning" on expanding where they sell for years now.

  • What is the point of going through all of that trouble to have some privacy if you still have to use a lot of Google apps and Play store anyways? Google is laughing...

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Thom34 ( 6232932 )

      Point is that you don't have to do those other steps.

      What makes you think that people would truly need Google apps or Play store ?

      I have had now over a year de-googled phone as a daily driver, and I am doing just fine.

    • https://www.openstreetmap.org/ [openstreetmap.org] I trust far more than Google maps, which often has wrong information. You can have a Google-free world, if you want it.

      • There are several things blocking my escape from Google. The navigation routing in openstreetmap wasn't working the last few times I tried it. My phone has a Sony camera with DRM, so if you install any open source OS, the camera stops working. And then there is Netflix with their nazi DRM requirements making the app not work, even on many fully legit Android devices. I'm actually considering carrying 2 devices, 1 open source phone for actual communication, and 1 Google device with no SIM card, just for

  • Son, I am disappoint.
  • Will that 30 Euro premium be enough to make the system profitable/competitive enough to be viable long term?

  • I keep waiting to buy one, but they keep not releasing it here. :-/

  • With stronger privacy measures, new ways to engage users, extended support for foldable devices, and much more, the third Android 11 Preview for developers is now available. Start preparing your apps and send us your comments to make the launch even more robust. 123movies [medium.com]

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