The Fairphone 4 is a phone released in 2021 and that I purchased in 2022 with the /e/OS operating system and I am incredibly satisfied with my purchase.
About Fairphone#
Fairphone is a dutch social enterprise producing phones, which aims to fairly compensate their workers in the entire supply chain and use as many recycleable materials as possible. In addition to that the company aims to produce phones which are usable for as long as possible and this is very commendable!
My problem with most smartphones#
I had many smartphones in the past, but I was never the kind of a person to follow the trends and I never really wanted to have flagship phones from companies like Apple or Samsung. I was always bothered by bloatware installed on phones and not being able to have control over the software or the operating system. Many phones also have locked bootloaders, so good luck installing custom ROMs.
Even though I owned a phone, I was not in control of it. If the battery failed, it was hard to replace it and the bloatware and Google’s telemetry meant I had no privacy at all. I don’t want to change my phone every two years, I prefer to switch every 5 or so years and to commit to my hardware - to actually feel good about what I’m using.
The Fairphone 4#
The Fairphone 4 is very special. It’s a modular phone, so you can assemble it yourself just with a screwdriver and replace every part of it - the company even provides spare parts and you’ll also find third party providers.
In addition to that I got an amazing 5-year warranty. I also love the aluminium frame - it gives the phone a robust feeling. It’s quite massive, but I kinda like it and find other phones to be very thin and breakable. My fairphone fell down on the ground quite a few times with just minimal scratches and the screen is completely intact. It’s also partially waterproof, which is great for a hiker like me. The official silicon casing also feels amazing and the phone just looks good.
Performance wise it’s nothing special, but then again all I need is to be able to emulate games and it emulates Wii games quite well (which is my main performance benchmark):
But the main reason I purchased it is it’s completely open bootloader and massive community support. Want to root your phone? Pas de Probleme Want to install Ubuntu Touch? Kun plezuro The company even supports alternative operating systems.
The only minus of this phone is the absence of a headphone jack
/e/ OS#
I specifically purchased my Fairphone from Murena, a French 🇫🇷 company, which provides Murena Cloud Services and ships their devices with /e/ OS preinstalled.
/e/ OS is a derivative of LineageOS, a custom android ROM, but it makes sure that there are no traces of Google left on your Android device. It uses MicroG to replace Google Play Services, which provides you with much more privacy and Mozilla Location Service instead of Google for geolocation. It’s a completely degoogled phone, providing you with more privacy and perfomance! Also it’s got great optics, bridging Android and iOS.
But the cool thing about /e/ OS is that it also provides you with a set of Google-less apps which replace their google alternatives. Google maps are replaced with OpenStreetMaps and the Google play store with an App Lounge that tells you how much an application spies on you - most Android apps run on the OS, but not all. I also installed F-Droid, Termux, Fennec and OsmAnd~
But the cool part about Murena is that it offers you your own E-Mail address, a 1GB cloud and also syncs your otherwise modular and encapsulated apps. Every app on your phone follows the Linux philosophy: Do one thing and do it well, and Murena does the same. I love this Ansatz. This way your data will always be safe and the data centres are in France 🇫🇷🇪🇺 which is known to respect user privacy, unlike countries like the USA 🇺🇸, Russia 🇷🇺 or China 🇨🇳.
Conclusion#
I absolutely love my Fairphone 4 with /e/ OS. It was a great purchase and I know for a fact that I won’t replace it anytime soon (except for maybe parts of it, but hey the company provides me with spare parts and I can replace them myself 😂). Your phone should be your phone and you should have full control over it. The freedom, openness and quality are just stunning and I just love my phone 📱 even after 3 years of use!
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