It still sucks for security. If you own this phone you should consider that the authorities and pretty much anyone who really wants to can get into your phone at will. I wish they could meet Graphene’s hardware requirements.
The new Fairphone is available on Amazon and at Fairphone.com for $650, and it’s officially certified to work on T-Mobile and AT&T’s networks.
Fail lol
The peasants in the USA will learn what a repairable phone is!
This is perfect - my wife and I have both been limping along on old falling-apart phones, and have been looking for something new that doesn’t make us feel gross for supporting a major company, and isn’t overloaded with so many nearly-useless features. Decided to take the de-google plunge at the same time, and grabbed the eos ones!
If this thing ran grapheneos I’d get rid of my pixel tomorrow
It can run EndeavorOS, which is deGoogle’d. Not quite as private and secure, but it’s better than stock Android.
There’s also a user on here who’s been working to make Linux drivers for the FP6 as well, and they’re making good progress
Only if…
(The company is also teasing its next-generation Fairbuds 2 wireless earbuds, launching later this year, which it says set “a new bar for repairability and performance.”)
I wish they could figure out a type of earbuds that wouldn’t require batteries. Sadly, it seems that technology is either unachievable or lost to time.
Do wired usb-c headphones not exist? Don’t get me wrong, I hate that everyone has dropped the jack and buds can fuck right off, but they’re just advertising those buds as an adjacent product, they’re not locking anyone in.
I see many people complaining about phones not having an audio jack anymore. But really I don’t think it would make that much sense add one to the phone. The only thing I could see is to make the usb c modular like framework did.
One good-ish reason is that In A Certain country the Bluetooth connections are monitored by Flock cameras and all, so you will be identified if you have Bluetooth headphones on in a public place. And that’s likely to spread other places too eventually…
Excellent! Hoping for Jolla someday too!
$650 is less bad than I thought it was going to be.
Especially considering that is with 12gb of RAM instead of the previous 8
Surprised to see that the 6+ with its 12gb of ram has lower price per gig of ram than the regular old 6. Guess I’ll upgrade my pixel 7 to the 6+
I’ll be that guy. No headphone jack, no sale. As others have said, I’d love GrapheneOS as well, but I know why that isn’t in the cards.
Like Samsung, pixel and iPhone have headphone jack bro! But yea, stick with iPhone, pixel and Samsung that can’t even change the battery!
Yeah, no jack no thanks …
Not a deal breaker for others but it is for me. Their rationale saying that the USB-C is more resilient than the jack is weird because I’ve never had the jack fail and even if it does isn’t that why you’re selling a repairable phone to me …?
Anyways, I see they’re selling earbuds so I’m going to assume that that’s their main motivator.
I’ve had several 3.5mm jacks fail. I’ve yet to have a USBC port fail, but I’ve also had fewer USBC ports and for fewer years.
I’ve had them both be problematic. Nothing deoxit can’t fix.
Headphone jacks have a hell of a lot of leverage on that port. An IP68 headphone jack is honestly pretty bulky.
I’d rather have one. I also also like us to go back to phones that are 1cm+ thick and just fill it out with battery.
Yeah it’s pointless having a super thin phone if the camera array is still an inch thick
I’ve had GrapheneOS for a little bit now, and while it’s great that ‘Google’ has been stripped from it, but the giant warning that you can’t avoid when restarting the phone, so many services simply breaking, it feels a lot like the old days of custom ROMs. Maybe for certain people it can be a daily driver, but goodness it’s difficult to diagnose and fix bugs when it all comes back to Google permissions and services that you really can’t get around.
/e/OS is that middle ground between GrapheneOS and stock Android, and it has most of the benefits of the former while stripping away most of the deficiencies of the latter. You also don’t have to use Murena’s cloud suite, but it’s pretty good for what it is if you do want or need that part of it.
And a bonus is that /e/OS runs on every device that can run GrapheneOS in addition to other devices, and the Fairphone 6+ is one of them.
I’ve been using it for almost a month and I’m a big fan. I was planning to wait for the Motorola phone but my screen on my old phone was rapidly becoming unusable.
I’m using it to divorce Big Tech. I created two secondary profiles, one for work and one for Big Tech. The Big Tech profile is where I’ll enable Google services and permissions. I don’t let it run in the background so once I switch back its like I turned off Big Tech. I can still use all the apps and services I’m used to, but I added enough friction that it’s causing me to explore alternatives every day.
My owner profile has Play and Play Services totally disabled. I get push notifications for Signal using Sunup for UnifiedPush. I get apps mostly through Accressent, Obtainium, and Aurora. If apps complain about missing Google services too much, they get relegated to the Big Tech profile while I find an alternative. Most of the apps that complain about it (like Ring) still work fine. Most of the “apps” I use are just PWAs that run in Vanadium and have icons on the home screen.
The biggest issues I’ve had were around RCS messaging. I was able to get it to work in the Owner profile, but it’s a known issue that it doesn’t work in secondary profiles. I’m just not getting group texts from iPhone users anymore. Oh well, everyone who matters will contact me on Signal or SMS directly. I was never able to get E2EE working over RCS with iPhone users anyways, even though my carrier supposedly supports it and the iPhones were updated.
It’s also exposing just how much I depend on Big Tech. I’ll probably be switching to Proton for mail, calendar, and VPN. My one gripe is they don’t have a way to sync contacts to my phone. Still, Ill happily pay $10 a month for storage and services that don’t spy on me for advertising instead of paying $3 a month for a service where I can’t expect any privacy.
I’m still using Big Tech while driving unfortunately, haven’t explored alternatives to Maps and Spotify yet.
Comaps is really good but I haven’t found anything that provides traffic data… So also using google maps for driving
You really should consider dropping Ring for something that doesn’t automatically and enthusiastically give your recordings to cops without a warrant or even a subpoena. I wish I could recommend something cloud based but they all suck; right now I’m planning to install PoE IPTV cameras around the outside of the house so the feeds stay within my network, with a remote access tunnel for myself and family members when we’re not home.
Proton is not the paragon of privacy they claim to be; they have been caught lying about log retention and have volunteered subscriber info to authorities with zero resistance. I use Fastmail for email/calendar/files, I know they don’t advertise themselves as “the one true privacy service” like Proton does, but they have a strong privacy policy and I’ve had almost 100% uptime from them over the past decade. They are also less expensive than Proton, though they don’t offer a VPN. They don’t sell your data or run any advertising in their apps and services, and they haven’t jumped on the “AI” bandwagon like Proton and other similar services have. Their mobile apps are top notch and their desktop app, while just an Electron-wrapped thing, is still pretty damned good and works great on Linux. The web app itself is 100% compatible with Firefox and its far superior forks like Librewolf and Waterfox; it’s my main working environment even in OpenBSD where I spend much of my day.
A good alternative to Spotify is Tidal, a little less expensive and they pay artists much more than the other services, plus they offer independent artists an easy way to distribute their own music, similar to Bandcamp.
Maps is a tough one, Google and Apple have cornered the market there. HERE Maps used to be great, especially a decade ago with Windows Phone devices, but I haven’t looked at them lately.
It’s only going to get more difficult to get Big Tech out of our lives over the next few years, so there’s never a better time than right now to start. I wish you success and freedom on this journey, my friend.
Thanks for the tips. Amazon/Alexa/Ring are next on my list after the de-Google.
Fastmail seems like it’s worth a try. Privacy from data brokers and ad companies is my main goal so Fastmail gets a green check mark there. It doesn’t seem like they claim E2EE but they do claim encryption.
I guess I was thinking Proton because the E2EE “we can’t even see your data” claim is appealing in an age where corporations are hungry for data to train their AI models.
I am also interested in the bundled VPN with Proton, but yeah the price is a little off-putting and it seems like it is going up.
Been meaning to check out Librewolf, but Vanadium has been pretty good so far.
I use Organic Maps very often. It’s not perfect. It wrongly identifies a shop next to me. It also occasionally gives less than ideal for my taste directions. However, it is subjectively 99% good and right about the map objects and the directions. It is reliable, basically.
Google’s app has given me issues too in the past. It’s not like Google is without its chinks.
So I am happy with it and would recommend it at least for a spin. For me it’s a daily driver app.
They have a great team, sadly they continuously aimed for a broad target audience in lack of support for degoogled OSes (only doing the bare minimum) and the headphone jack indeed. Also, sadly, the long life thingie is a joke when you are a cautious user and you don’t break your phone. 5-7 years after purchase, spare parts are no longer available :/
Even if you don’t have the need for spare parts, don’t forget that they deliver security updates longer than any other manufacturer that I’ve heard of. So longevity is not just about the hardware.
EDIT: Also, they just newly stopped selling fairphone 3 spare parts. That’s 7 full years of stocking parts. Not bad IMO. And you can probably still find them in stock at resellers. I see display modules on ebay (from china) and at least one german eshop
They deliver security updates for the pre-installed OSes they support. Those updates are no good for most users that load their own flavour of OS. What counts is hardware that has open source drivers (Also - holy fuck - the homepage almost gave me a seizure and I am not an epileptic). Where they are doing OKish, but not great.
As for “7 full years of stocking parts” - the first 3-4 years are next to useless, almost no phone breaks that fast unless physically damaged. And it only becomes relevant for most people who take care with their phone after 5+ years. And that’s exactly when the support period ends. Which is unfortunately, the opposite of the “sustainable phone” that they promise.
As said, they do have a great team, and they do do Fair Trade, and they do engage with the community - all good things. But I am quite disappointed in the “by the time you need a replacement part, it’s out of stock” lesson learned.
Having worked in a smartphone after market organisation, I can assure you that phones do break due to user error also in the first few years. Screen breaks, phones are dropped, charging ports are subject to user violence… while this is apparenrly not true for you, there are probably hundreds of thousand of fairphone users, so I think their spare parts availability is really good. And as I said, even now you can buy spare parts for discontinued fairphone models from ebay and other 3rd parties.
Is it not worth repairablity and potential headphone jack upgrades? Their pr is really moving quick now… 🤔
How would they sell a headphone jack upgrade?
That’s not the same thing. There’s also nothing worse than being on a long journey wanting to listen to music but needing to also charge your phone before you reach your destination.
it’s always something.
Listen man, if the phone doesn’t have a 3.5mm jack, IR Blaster, FM radio receiver, pop out rotating 6mp camera, micro SD slots, 2g compatibility, Native flash support and a physical keyboard that pops out like the fucking matrix, then it’s a complete piece of corporate shit and you’re a complete neo liberal bum bandit if you think otherwise…
Do you have phone recommendations? I like your list.
I mean you’re obviously being sarcastic.
but why cant phones have a radio receiver? That would be super useful, and something I’d use often.
Screw that microSD slot, give me the full fat SD slot like my Treo 650 had back in 2007! The spring loaded kind so I can lose yet another SD when I pull the phone out of my pocket and the card snags on my jeans and goes flying and I don’t realize it until I’m 30 minutes away from where it happened, and now some guy in the AutoZone parking lot has my dog photos and Space Trader save files.
they make em with a usb-c + 3.5mm -> usb-c still not the same, but a way to get by
Well the phone’s modular for a reason…
I don’t think it’s modular in that way
I suppose you’re right. :(
YAAAAAY
Bluetooth is fine for mobile.
Now make it for Graphene
There’s one dev who’s been hard at work making postmarketOS work for FP6:
I thought Fairphone was one of the few supported phones. Perhaps I’m thinking of a different phone OS.
No I think you are thinking of calyx. Graphene repeatedly asserted that they won’t support fairphone because of the slow update.
It wasn’t just the update cycle either, it’s that they don’t have the physical hardware chips to support Graphene’s minimum requirements for security, which would severely weaken any benefits you actually get from GrapheneOS.
not any, but some benefits, and GrapheneOS maintainers are perfectionists
Entirely lacking disk encryption for typical users due to not having a secure element is a pretty major flaw.
It’s also missing hardware accelerated virtualization which is necessary for much of GrapheneOS’s sandboxing, has weak security for other keys in the OS keystore, is missing hardware memory tagging which makes it much easier for apps to use overflow attacks, doesn’t have proper verified boot support once a custom alternative OS is flashed, and leaves exposed debugging APIs even when the phone is locked.
This breaks:
- Secure app spawning
- Memory corruption protection
- Integer overflow protection
- Most of Graphene’s kernel hardening
- Much of Graphene’s attack surface reduction abilities
- Hardware-based attestation and security monitoring
- Quick tile protection pre-unlock
- Debugging access prevention
- Verified Boot
- The security of your PIN against any automated attack
At that point, GrapheneOS can’t physically provide you essentially any security anymore.
Entirely lacking disk encryption for typical users due to not having a secure element is a pretty major flaw.
all android devices have been using file based disk encryption since several Android versions now.
the others are all good to have security features, but lets be honest, a proper sensors permission toggle does not require any of that, just like a dozen other features only GrapheneOS has. storage scopes, contact scopes, pin scrambling and the requirement of fingerprint + pin for unlocking the lock screen, duress pin, the user profile improvements
all this does not require any hardware support.
While that is true yes, their whole brand is built on being secure.
If they release to Fairphone it won’t be long before the news is flooded with “Police easily bypass supposedly secure GraphoneOS”
And that’s not a look they’d want.
I like their stance on All or Nothing.
Motorola is shipping with GraphineOS soon.
all android devices have been using file based disk encryption since several Android versions now.
All Android devices are supposed to support it, but not all do. (or at least, not all do effectively without compromising the cryptographic root of trust by not implementing proper hardware security chips)
I’ll grant it to you on the scopes, PIN changes, etc, but realistically I just don’t think anyone can justify GrapheneOS being something that should be supported on Fairphone given how absolutely desolate the phone looks with regard to any attempt at all to hardware security.
It really depends on what security level you want out of a phone. Most people are concerned with a pickpocket stealing and being able to access everything. Most of the world doesn’t need the security level required to pass through the united states border control. Which they will just force to put the pin anyways or put you in jail for even having a secure device.
It really depends on what security level you want out of a phone
It does, but that’s exactly my point. GrapheneOS will provide you essentially no more security than any other alternative Android operating system, should it have to operate on a Fairphone with all those features not supported by a Fairphone stripped away.
Unless Fairphone adds more hardware security features that are standard on most other phones, and highly supported on Pixels, installing a heavily crippled GrapheneOS on a Fairphone would get you essentially none of the benefits of GrapheneOS in the first place.
Buy a Pixel or wait for Motorola to release their GrapheneOS compatible smartphone.
I haven’t heard of this. Looking into it there’s at least a year wait. I’d consider it - though my Edge 2022 battery may not make it until then. Damn thing was crap from day 1.
I am pretty sure Motorola plans to sell flag ship devices with GrapheneOS preinstalled. They won’t support old devices. Also the manufacturer needs to still ship firmware updates for a specific duration for GrapheneOS to support it.
GrapheneOS already announced a direct partnership with Motorola, so they clearly already figured that out officially.
Motorola also promises 5 main Android version updates for their phones now.
Graphene is only on pixels, why not their /e/os?
Graphene is only on pixels
Only because Pixels have met their hardware requirements. They are going to start working with Motorola now.
why not their /e/os?
From what I understand, the two OS are not aiming for the same objectives. /e/os is a degoogled OS and that’s its main purpose. GrapheneOS is focused on hardening security on AOSP.
Why not posmarketOS?
I want postmarket so bad.
They did actually get a camera working for fairphone 6+, yesterday, kinda, mostly https://catcrafts.net/posts/fairphone-6-postmarketos-working-main-camera
I need an ok camera, ok video, gps, volte, sms, and ~18 hours of battery life with maybe 6-8 of it active.
I love Linux as much as the next guy but I’ve got PostmarketOS as well as Ubuntu touch running on a Fairphone 4 and the experience is far from polished, postmarket doesn’t even do VoLTE.
Not saying it sucks - I love it. But it’s not for everyone and unlikely to replace android for most use cases at the moment unfortunately.
postmarket doesn’t even do VoLTE.
Well do i have good news for you!
they got the camera kinda working on the 6+ yesterday too https://catcrafts.net/posts/fairphone-6-postmarketos-working-main-camera
Yeah I think it just doesn’t work on the FP4 yet. At least I haven’t managed to get it working. On Ubuntu touch it also took years (although that community is also very… special)
That’s definitely possible, although it will take some work, because the processor is different from the Fairphone 6, which is currently running post-market OS already.
It won’t take any work, Luca has confirmed the image works on both Fairphone 6 and Fairphone 6+
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairphone-fp6)
its on the wiki now too
Oh sweet, thanks
Preferably before my Pixel 6 is EOL later this year…
Does official pixel eol affect grapheneos?
yes, they only support devices still supported by Google updates. When a pixel is eol’d, graphene stops supporting the device
You either have to wait for Motorola or get a new Pixel.
I’d choose any other company over Google tbh.
My last few have been used off ebay. Pixels really are mediocre phones these days. And the deals on used A series aren’t as good as I remember.
