Fairphone 6 with e/OS (or state of de-googling part 3 I guess)

Reasoning

It was finally time to put my Samsung S20 to rest. I didn’t want to as it ran just fine - perhaps with the exeption of the battery. But no more security updates, together with one last meeting with the bathroom tiles one morning was the final nail in the coffin. I briefly ran LineageOS on it but that’s a story for another time.

I landed on The Fairphone gen 6 or just Fairphone 6 as it should have been called as my replacement. Why? Well in short form these would be my pros:

• Long promised software support with actual track-record to back it up. While no longer unique in the space it was a requirement.
• Spare parts with actual availability when you need them years from now - again with a track-record to back up the claims.
• The hardware, while mid-tier by many standards, is actually really solid for a light to medium user like myself. And crucially I don’t feel like the camera is much of a tradeoff coming from an S20 it’s a solid step up.
• One of the most open platforms for custom ROMs and third party OSs. e/OS is a first class citizen available for purchase out of the box, and the Fairphone 5 is Ubuntu touch’s flagship platform apareantly.

On the con side it could be summed up as “larger than my current phone” and a bit pricier than the hardware justifies. Honestly if Fairphones software support and spare parts buys me even an extra year of use that is money well spent. I could also choose to think of it as the price to pay for more ethically sourced materials.

Buying

The Fairphone 6 is available at one of the largest electronics retailers in Norway - Elkjøp so purchasing it is as simple as walking into a store. The sales person even asked if I wanted to have a look at it before buying as it was on display as of the day I bought it due to popular demand. That was actually really cool to hear!

Set up

The Elkjøp version of the Fairphone 6 is the one with stock Android as you’d expect. I thought I’d give it a spin before potentially putting e/OS on it. I booted up the phone, saw the usual Google apps that I’d worked to get rid of, and then spotted Google Gemeni and pretty much noped out if it right then and there. Why? Well, there are reasons1. This is not a criticism of Fairphone. They need to ship what is expected of them to a mainstream audience. This is a personal choice and enabling me to make that choice as smoothly as possible is all I can really hope for here - and on that they deliver.

Setting up e/OS was smooth. Their in-browser flashing tool did’t work but I’m ready to blame a containerized browser (Chromium snap on Ubuntu) here. Following the steps with adb in the terminal was problem free. I do see the value in the in-browser tool though. Very few people actually spends a lot of time in the terminal, and bringing non big-tech alternatives to a less tech-inclined audience is great!

There is a very important thing to note though. It is clearly written in the documentation but I’ll quote it here as well:

If you try installing a version of /e/OS based on a security patch that is older than the one on your device, you will brick your device. To check the security patch level on your phone with a locked bootloader, prior to installing /e/OS, open your phone Settings » About Phone » Android Version » Android Security Patch Level. Then compare it against the level of the security patch on the /e/OS build as visible in the Downloads for FP6 section below.

You should check the patch before starting to flash your phone to be sure that you do not brick it when re-locking the bootloader.

Truth be told I do not know how much there is to gain locking the bootloader (unless physical access to your phone is part of threat vector you want to mitigate). I did it to potentially minimize apps not wanting to run due to some stupid check. Did it help? I don’t know.

I’ll also say that I’m not a fan of the initial design of the e/OS launcher, but thankfully that is not much of a problem on Android. I used the opportunity to test out Niagara Launcher.

The Norwegian perspective

Here are a few notes with the regards to running the Fairphone 6 with e/os in Norway at the time of writing:

• I had to do a little dance for mobile data to work. This could very well be due to my ancient SIM card.
• The SAS app could not be found in the default App Lounge (store). Installing Aurora Store and getting through there worked fine. Could be a workaround for other apps as well.

The following “important” and potentially “quirky” apps work

• BankID - although requires a Chromium based browser (in my case Vivaldi) to be set as default to register for the biometric authentication. Still works after setting Firefox as standard, but there is some quirkiness where things work best if Bitwarden is already unlocked before triggering the auth flow.
• Vipps with “Tæpp” (works as a wallet)
• Digipost works fine
• Dibber works (if you know, you know)
• Entur works
• Flytoget works (wouldn’t open on LineageOS)
• Mobilbank Sør (Sparebanken Norge) works, but freaks out if using any non-standard keyboard
• Oslo Bysykkel works
• Ruter works
• Vinmonopolet works (crazy to think it wouldn’t but it didn’t like my test of LineageOS …)

That is a selection off the top of my head.

In conclusion

Honestly, I’m super happy to see how well everything works. After the initial installation and the 2-3 quirks to get mobile data and BankID up and running I could very well hand this phone to my mom. Although I will say that my starting point is somewhat smoothened due to my previous de-googling, so maybe keep that in mind.

I might update this later if I run into new things worth mentioning.

Feel free to send me an email if you have any questions or other input!

My PGP key if interested: F5295541836A684D09D7CBDA4EF3F96C97F4323B