/e/OS (Murena) and Fairphone

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21

So, what would the OS recommendation be if one still wanted to get a Fairphone? GrapheneOS does not support it.

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22

The recommendation would be to not get a fairphone.

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23

DivestOS?

24

There would be no recommendation because youā€™re choosing an insecure device. DivestOS is only listed for harm reduction and extending the life of EOL devices, so thatā€™s probably your only option.

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25

Thank you for the explanation.

When you say ā€œinsecureā€, should I assume that means privacy in this case?

26

Take a look at this topic: Fairphone 5

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27

Fairphone takes longer to ship firmware updates (sometimes up to a year) and the chip is going to be EOL in ~5 years which is less than their promised date of EOL 7 years.

Keep in mind that Fairphone 4 has worse issues in that their boot process trusts test-keys. So if you are going to get a Fairphone at all, get 5.

Thereā€™s really no security or privacy reason to get a Fairphone (You might want to get it because repairibility or paying workers fairly, but those arenā€™t security and privacy related)

Still, if you really want one, Iā€™d wait for DivestOS 21 to come out and work on FP 5 starts.

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28

I mean the only reason would be to dual-boot two OS on your phone, which could in some cases have privacy benefits.

29

Is there a privacy benefit of dual-booting instead of just using two user or a work profile?

30

I guess you could have something like Tails on your SD Card and then GOS on main

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31

I donā€™t think Tails is supported on Android devices nor would it be very practical to use

32

Agreed, but down the road this could be, although it would be very niche.

33

My question was only about the choice of OS if someone already has a Fairphone. I personally do not want to pay directly to either Google or Apple, and my life is not on my phone at all as it is for most other people, so for me Fairphone has been on my mind as a possible replacement.

But thank you very much for explaining instead of just dismissing the question outright. It is much appreciated.

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34

DivestOS is the ā€œofficialā€ Privacy Guides recommendation for non-Pixel phones and as others said will hopefully be available for the Fairphone 5 soon. CalyxOS also used to be listed as a PG recommendation but was removed as it was a bit superfluous (didnā€™t support any devices that werenā€™t already covered by GrapheneOS and DivestOS).

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35

Oh since you were asking about why itā€™s insecure I decided to explain. Security is a gradient and itā€™s pretty silly to dismiss things outright.

Fairphone is more secure with a custom OS than letā€™s say Xiaomi or OnePlus as they have a relockable bootloader.

As always, I recommend DivestOS, especially if you are going the digital minimalism route and Graphene isnā€™t supported (which it isnā€™t on Fairphone)

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