Need a new phone? Get a Fairphone!
Need a new phone? Get a Fairphone!
They try to produce them as sustainable as possible. You can replace the battery and other parts. And you support an European company!
How does the OS work? It's a forked Android system or something, right?
It's whatever you want it to be. You can put a linux distro or android (& derivatives) or anything
Okay now you have me interested
Fairphones are a good start, however their proprietary /e/OS has numerous glaring security gaps that the company does not address. For example:
- An unlocked bootloader, which enables any attacker with physical access to your phone to extract data and even load malware onto it.
- Its 'native IP' scrambler is an old, unmaintained fork of TOR.
- MicroG, its answer to Google Play Services, still relies on Google servers to collect and connect data from apps to your phone.
DivestOS maintained a list of security lapses that the E Foundation had not closed, but now that DivestOS is abandoned, I can't find the document. While Fairphone is a good answer to the centralization of the tech industry to the US and China, it's still rough and needs improvement before its security can be trusted. Please be aware that not every alternative is a good alternative. Be discerning, with this mass-migration, people are bound to get caught by dishonest representation and marketing.
As much as I like the Fairphone people, the phones suck for me personally:
- too big (FP1 was perfect size)
- life cycle is fucking short: support gets dropped before my phone breaks (my FP1 is still in perfect shape but alas no security updates for years, had to trash my FP2 because when the charging port started to become unreliable, no spare parts were being sold anymore) - which flies in the face of their "mission to sustainability
- not enough focus on LineageOS support
- way too many cameras - but seemingly most people are vain enough to like that
Not until they bring back 3.5mm jack.
No. They are slowly abandoning their namesake.