I recently picked up a Fairphone 4. I got it mostly because of the removable battery and easy repairing, but it’s nice to know I’m supporting a manufacturer that cares about sustainability.
Cool, are those the modular ones intended to be able to replace all the different pieces of it?
Yup. Basically every part of the phone is repairable and replaceable. I bought it after I accidentally water damaged my previous phone- an LG V20 that had served me faithfully for almost 6 years. I initially thought I might be able to just replace the display of my V20 because the rest of it works fine, but LG no longer makes phones (and the V20 is an older model), so I didn’t have much option.
I use GrapheneOS on Pixel.
Ahh cool, I’ve messed around with rooting, bootloaders, TWRP, and Lineage OS and all that stuff when I was younger, and I kept bricking my devices. I don’t do that anymore nowadays. Too much hassle.
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All of that is 100x harder than installing Graphene. Graphene can be installed by almost anyone who can watch this video: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAZlmYKrwfk
Pixel 6 Pro running GrapheneOS, which I got a couple months ago. Pixel phones are the only ones compatible with GrapheneOS, otherwise I would’ve kept my Samsung phone tbh
Practically same story here. Pixel 7 Pro here, also running Graphene. Switched off my trusty Note9 only because graphene only supports Pixels.
So I know I’m in the minority not really caring all that much about the whole Google ecosystem, I enjoy it and how everything stays connected, I’m not necessarily on a crusade to prevent all data tracking on myself and all of that.
I have a Pixel 6 Pro as well and looks like I’m gonna wait until the 9 pro to upgrade again if possible, my 6 pro is over a year old and still showing no signs of stopping, still plenty of power for everything I need it for and beyond. Is there anything beyond de-googling that GrapheneOS provides? Can I stay google-ified while running it? Just trying to see what kind of benefits it provides other than de-googling
Same story as you, afraid of evil corporations, wanting to take more control over my data, so I changed to a pixel 7 pro with GraphenOS.
If you’re wondering how buying a phone from Google helps in this you can read the answer in here https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/2989-pixel-phone-vs-samsung-or-others
only Pixels that support alternate OS and allowing them full use/access to all the hardware security features.
Currently using a Google Pixel 5 that’s running CalyxOS.
Ditched Apple after they initially announced they were going to start screening messages and photos (although they later walked that back). I value privacy, and hence hate Google. But Google do make sole good hardware. CalyxOS allows me to have the best of both worlds… a privacy-centric OS, running on decent hardware that’s compatible with any Android app (although you still need to be a little careful what you install from a privacy perspective).
I am aware that more modern Pixel models have been released, but I’m waiting for one that’s a little less massive. Every model since the Pixel 5 has been larger than it.
I also have a Pixel 5 and like the size of it. Whenever I handle my wife’s Pixel 6 it feels freaking huge.
Was thinking about Calyx or Graphene. Is it pretty low fuss for daily use?
I was on Graphene but switched to Calyx. Personally, I find easier. The integration of microG helps with a few things, such as apps stuck using Google’s push notification service and apps that require SafetyNet. I was going to try Graphene again, but I was thinking of waiting for a new phone.
Calyx is very nice. I’ve found it to be no fuss at all.
Apple might turn evil? They have always been evil, and goole is evil to. Try a free android distro like CalyxOS, GraphineOS, LineageOS or /e/OS. This is not a complete list.
Any that can run on a Samsung flagship?
Lineage or Calyx should have you covered.
iOS because Apple ecosystem is much more convenient and consistent. I do not worry so much about the struggle you mentioned because the EU will fix it (see USB-C, sideoading, more to come)
iPhone 11. I agree on the dangers of corps turning evil, but I don’t agree that the solution is to move from ”might turn evil in the future” (Apple) to ”already pretty far in the evil camp” (Google). This is already becoming apparent with the enshittification of Google search. Chromium and Android will soon follow.
I am in the same boat, in my world Apple is better than Google. It works a bit better out of the box, and lately I don’t use my phone for a lot of things anyway, mostly doomscrolling on reddit (now lemmy).
Android because I like the freedom it provides.
As for the phone I’m using. It’s a Oneplus 3 I got a few years back, it’s falling apart but I can’t afford changing it, so I’ll be using it till its last breath.
Zed’s phone is almost dead, babe. 😉
Xiaomi Mi 10T with LineageOS 19 (there’s no v20 for it) I bought it because I needed a new one that supports 5G and didn’t cost a fortune.
Next one might be a Fairphone 5 whenever it comes out. Or a Pixel with GrapheneOS.
I’m also interested in a mobile that runs Linux instead of Android (see PinePhone). But there’re none that have good/current hardware.
I’d recommend getting that pixel. They have 5 years of support with security patches. Do know that the 5 years is with newer devices from 6/6a & up
Running a Pixel 6 with default OS right now.
Will change to GrapheneOS when it’s no longer supported.
Why did I choose it? Because there’s no real choice besides Android in the phone world. Apple won’t let me install the things I need and is unnecessarily expensive. Plus, the camera is really good.
Problem: even with an alternative operating system, you still don’t get security updates for the baseband firmware, and that thing is a huge remote attack surface that, if compromised, grants the attacker unfettered access to the entire phone.
Some new phones isolate the baseband processor from the rest of the system. Only the small independent phone makers like Librem use such a design, though.
GrapheneOS often picks up security flaws in the android open source project and fixes them before google goes. I won’t claim they fix everything but I’ve seen enough examples of things they fix over AOSP that make me doubt they wouldn’t have fixed something like that (on top of keeping everything updated). Maybe you weren’t referring to Graphene but still worth a shoutout for being a very (the most?) secure operating system.
I’m talking about the baseband, the device that talks to the cell network (among many other functions). It has its own closed-source firmware, no open-source substitute for that firmware exists, and it has full access to the entire system, bypassing the CPU and OS. Installing a different OS will not stop attackers from exploiting vulnerabilities in the baseband firmware and taking over the phone.
Another pixel 6 user here.
I personally chose the Pixel over other Android phones, because Google guarantees 5 years of security updates.
Unlike everyone else, where you’re lucky to get even 3 years of updates.
I have a Google Pixel 2XL running GrapheneOS.
Fairphone 4 running /e/OS. I love the modularity, quality and robustness. Just the fact that if I drop my screen I can just replace it for €80 using my own hands.
/e/OS is still in development, which you sometimes notice, but I love its privacy focused aspects. It is decoupled from Google, includes a tracker monitor and blocker, an appstore that can download apps from the Google Play store anonymously and best of all the developers do deliver. All their releases are well tested.
The only thing I struggle with are in app purchases. If they use the Google Play platform they just won’t work.
I bought this phone from Murena, which is a branch of the /e/Foundation that sells devices with /e/OS preinstalled.
but I love its privacy focused aspects
Having worked at /e/OS, on the microG part, I can tell you that the privacy focus is way less than whatever you think it is. Also, the companies (yes, plural) behind /e/ or whatever it’s called now are French, and the French laws regarding government and intelligence agencies access to personal data are lax. By using /e/ and their services, you are not passing data to the US, you are not passing data to China, but rather you are passing data to France and the /e/ team - which if you search around, you might find out that they don’t have a really good street cred.
Too bad the Fairphone isn’t available outside of Europe.
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I don’t think they are any more “locked down” than the other vendors, usually they have a bunch more features on top of base android. I never used their store tho so idk if that’s what you’re refering to
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Um no? Depends on what you mean by “locked down”. For custom ROM? Probabaly. But for me, I just want to install apps without the approval of a corporation. If the appstore servers shut down or gets DDOSed for some reason, you’re out of luck.
If you are an EU resident you could just keep your iPhone and wait for the sideloading law to kick in, then you don’t have to worry about that anymore either.
I’m an American 😔.
Oh, in that case I guess Apple might region lock the feature, so switching is still a good call. Although in the grand scheme of things I think the legislation will still have a positive impact elsewhere and possibly motivate some US states to follow suit, like what California did after the GDPR.
Looks like (thanks to the EU again) that iOS will support side loading apps shortly which should at least give options should an app be removed from the store. As for the reality …. I guess we just need to wait and see https://www.macrumors.com/2023/04/17/app-sideloading-support-coming-ios-17/
Did apple shut down sideloading then? When I was testing on iOS, dev local installation was a pain but I would assume that’s still an option if you enable the dev features
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I use Sailfish OS on the Sony Xperia 10 III.
I choose the OS because I wanted a phone OS which would get updates for a long time, which sailfish has a good track record of and I wanted one which ran linux so that I had the normal things I’m used to on the desktop like systemd, pulseaudio, bash, rpm, etc. I did need it to run android for a couple of banking apps and sailfish provide a pretty decent android support layer. It’s worked really well, the biggest drawback I’d say is that parts of it are not open source and they’re kind of doing their own stuff so while some things do work like KDE apps, other apps would take a lot more effort to get working (gtk apps for example).> Fairphone
