ELI5: Why use /e/OS over Graphene? This isn’t a rhetorical rant; I’m genuinely curious.
Edit: See below. I misphrased this question.
You don’t own a pixel?
Sorry, I realize that question could be interpreted in two ways: I meant for Fairphone not to try to get Graphene working on their phone. I know Motorola is trying to do that right now, for example.
From what I’ve read elsewhere (seen some comments here, don’t remember the exact threads) the Graphene team has a specific hardware requirement that Fairphone doesn’t supply. Would be cool to see both projects working together though
Well in that case, it’s cool to see Fairphone using /e/OS!
That hardware requirement is something they could work on for upcoming phones.
That would be awesome if they do so. I like /e/OS for what it is and does, my FP4 works great after all. That said, having the option for Graphene OS I feel would do nothing but benefit all parties, so hopefully that can be addressed at some point.
Yes, but Fairphone is partnered with Murena (e/os), and there seems to be a beef between them and graphene, so I imagine its out of spite, too.
GrapheneOS is also open source. Fairphone could realistically fork the project without meeting the requirements deemed necessary for the maintenance effort by upstream.
I don’t actually see why they aren’t actually developing this. A lot of the work is done.
The team behind GrapheneOS want it to be really secure so they have specific requirements that the phones from Fairphone sadly doesn’t meet.
For a phone to meet all of these requirements AND still being everything that a Fairphone is would make the phone more expensive than the average consumer would be willing to pay. I know several enthusiasts (me included) that would pay for one, but there are simply just to few of us.
Fairphone can’t meet graphene security standards.
Graphene isn’t also that much better than the alternatives (when it comes to things other than security).
It’s mostly a thing of what’s available for your phone. For pixels 6 and newer (and I think some new motorolas as of recently) you can use graphene. If you are on fairphone or a bunch of other devices, you have support for e/OS. In general, graphene is a bit more secure than e/OS, so if you have the choice, it’s probably the way to go but if you don’t have a pixel and don’t want to buy one, e/OS is probably one of the better maintained degoogled android versions out there.
Here you can find a list with a feature comparison.no motorollas are supported yet by GrapheneOS. only new ones projected to come next year will be.
/e/OS is just a fork of LineageOS, with dubious software choices and practices. LOS is available for many more devices and is the cleaner almost-degoogled (like /e/ and other LOS forks) basic AOSP-like experience with lots of customization to use even in old devices that keep running modern android this way.
GOS is much more secure than LOS or any of its forks (including /e/), even more so when the latter is running in old devices that no longer have firmware updates. and it’s properly degoogled, with the option to use Google Services in the best way possible - without it having root access to your system and isolated from other apps, if you so wish
so, GrapheneOS is your best option. if you can’t or won’t, use LineageOS
I don’t believe Graphene supports Fairphone.
Because the hardware isn’t from google.
For anyone interested, there’s also an official lineage image now.
I’ve been using /e/OS on a FP6 for a few months now and I’m very happy with it (edit: for context I’m in Europe). I had doubts about whether it could run certain apps like bank or government apps but they work just fine. Most of the default apps work well, but I did replace the launcher because the one that comes with /e/OS doesn’t have as many features as I would like.
Battery life is also better than previous phones I’ve used. I don’t know if that’s because of the hardware or because the OS is less resource hungry.
One thing to watch out for is it doesn’t have a headphone jack, though you can get a separate adapter that plugs into the charging port.
My expetiences differ.
The default launcher regularly breaks, so I need to clean the cache, or wait until it succeeds. So for what I can, I use droidify or obtainium. Some apps also dont work properly as they are reliant on google services. Netflix comes to mind first.
Bank works, but governmental app (ID & payment) dont work, so I am still rel on work phone for those. Check forums, theres a list for these crucial apps and their status.
Other than that it’s been mostly smooth experience.
I am interested. If anyone out there has one in the US, I would like to hear your opinons about it
I have the Fairphone 6 (not the plus) running /e/os. It’s pleasant enough that when I had to use a vanilla android tablet I was kind of like (is this how you people live?! 😄 this is awful!)
Could you please tell how long battery lasts? Friend of mine with FP5 and CalyxOS is not very impressed
About 1.5 days, 2 if I stretch it.
No Verizon support makes it incompatible with my absolutely essential truly unlimited data via their Visible subsidiary. My job takes me away from home far too much to go without it.
I want to love this but I can’t compromise my security for this device. If y’all ever add MTE and the other features required by Graphene I’ll be the first in line
Fair enough. But too many people think privacy and security are the same thing.
GrapheneOS is dedicated to both privacy and security, whereas e/os (while it does have some security improvements over stock android) is much more focused on the privacy side of things.
