And a good day to you, sirs! I’m a Fairphone 5 owner, but I can’t say I am really a very satisfied one. After nearly two years of adapting myself to the pains of its everyday use hoping in an update solving the issues I’m having, I decided to take matters into my own hands by looking for a smoother experience with an alternative ROM (it is maybe the first phone I tried not to tinker with to try and not break anything, but I feel like it’s broken on its own).
My main issues are with the battery life and how slow and energy consuming it is at startup, and that reflects itself on what I’m looking for in an alternative operating system.
I’ve done my own research on how to choose where to go, but I’d like your opinions on the conclusions I’ve come to and on what would be my best choice, given that things keep on evolving with the passing of time (or the opposite, in some cases), and what I’ve read in older posts might not be still correct.
I have flashed LineageOS on many a phones, particularly on one my father discarded because it would not charge on account of nonexistent debris/moisture in its charging port. I use that as my pack mule, and I really like that a security and occasional minor fix upgrade is released constantly every week. That is my starting point, but I know there are alternatives/derivatives which address other important issues or might be better suited to a Fairphone.
From what I was able to understand:
- /e/OS has very concerning issues regarding AI use and collection of user data fed to big techs which are being handled horribly by the team
- CalyxOS is reported to roughly double battery life, but is on hiatus, which could be ending soon but has raised some doubts given that it looks like some people left the team making it hard for the others to continue working on it
- iodéOS might be the best choice, since it can easily integrate microG to make things requiring Google Play Services work while having a de-Googled environment and integrates its own tracker blocker to grant a good level of anonymity and privacy protection
So, I’m leaning toward iodé, but I’d want your feedback on it as a choice and, if someone is using it, on how good it works. Keep in mind that my priorities are:
- Energy efficient: I want to reduce battery absorption both for idle and for general usage, increasing a charge’s duration
- Smooth running: it is related to the first one, but I’ve often found my FP5 to be rather slow and clunky, like if too many things are running in the background clogging things up and wasting energy. I’m looking for something that’s faster and tidier
- Actively maintained: the assurance of constant updates and the prospect of this going on presumably for a long time would give me comfort, since I plan to keep my FP5 for a very long time still.
- Customizable: I’d like to be able to change a lot of things, both cosmetically but mainly technically, tailoring how things work under the hood to my liking, having many options to tinker with and removing things I don’t like and functionalities I don’t care about.
With this in mind, is iodé the right choice for me? Are my findings on the option for FP5 mostly correct?