I’m thinking of getting a fairphone in the future. I like that they are modular and last a while. Are they easily customizable to where I can flash a different ROM? Is the default configuration private?
The default Android on them is pretty standard including Google Play services, so it is not great in regards to privacy (but could be worse, like an Apple device or so).
But for most of their models you can find good alternative Android roms or even mobile Linux distributions like PostmarketOS.
Why would I think that Apple would be worse than Google when Apple is predominantly a hardware company and Google is predominantly an ad company?
Apple also runs an ad business these days and their devices collect more types of data than stock Android does. And contrary to many Android phones there is very little you can do against that in Apple devices.
Finally a good, nuanced article on this topic, thanks for sharing. Only drawback is that the author doesn’t seem to be aware that degoogling your phone is a viable alternative, especially with manufactures like Fairphone offering this out of the box.
Lots of people (including myself, previously) fall for the narrative that Apple can financially justify not spying on their users because their hardware is expensive. Versus Google, who have always been about ads and data mining.
This logic unfortunately fails to consider that a publicly trading company will always use all methods at their disposal to keep up profit so shareholders are happy. Expensive hardware was probably enough a decade ago, but the golden rule is: as long as a company can fuck you over in a way that increases profits, they absolutely will, given enough time.
We need federal privacy law in the U.S. and we need it fast.
Fairphone’s support of PostmarketOs shows me that they actually care about their mission.
As others said, it’s pretty stock android so… Bad. But you can buy it from Murena pre-flashed with e/os and then have a stock phone with a locked bootloader running a decently private OS. The bootloader is unlockable if you so wish.
I think the normal fairphone is just stock android.
There is a “Murena” version of it sold by Murena that comes with e/os preinstalled, which is based on android and works with some android apps.
I know that for a fact that you can’t install GrapheneOS on it, but CalyxIS is available for the Fairphone, then flash that and you’ll have full protection, minus mandatory communication services that are require to use any kind of a smartphone.
