Hello. Glad to see there is a good fairphone community in Canada so far! I thought I would add my experience so far to the conversation in case any of my experiences may help answer questions. I started reading through all the posts and after about 10 minutes realized how big the thread was, which is encouraging!
I just bought by FairPhone 4 a couple of months ago through a reseller on ebay. I was very impressed with FP and what they are trying to achieve. My main motivation was to try and shed trackers following me around on my phone and to try to eliminate google as much as possible from my digital life. Also to be able to have more sustainable, fairtrade when possible modular phone.
With that in mind I had intended to buy a FairPhone and right off the bat install a de-googled o.s. After a lot of research I decided that eOS most aligned with my goals. Though there was significant documentation about flashing FP4 with eOS the process still looked nerve racking to say the least. Especially with the potential possibility of bricking a brand new phone which I had not even used yet.
That being said I was lucky enough to use linux and have the experience go perfectly! eOS has been a dream so far. It seems to offer all the apps I had before migrating to eOS but even better it has a fantastic app store which gives you details about the specific trackers and permissions each respective app contains so you can decide if it is really worth it to install that app. It also comes with a built in GPS/location and IP spoofer and a great maps program (which works very well). Also I have already happily had an over the air O.S. update that worked perfectly.
Before buying I set up a phone appointment with with Koodo to ensure that the phone would work on their network and after looking at the specs I provided through a webpage they assured me I would be good to go. Everything on the network seems to work perfectly. The 4g LTE, calls, messaging and GPS all work, and there were even a couple of days where I had 5G working for some reason (even though Koodo says its customers won’t get 5G coverage any time soon).
Finally in terms of a case, I bought the official FP case but the only case they had left was “Red” which I was excited about. When I received it, it was DEFINITELY pink. The case was fine (besides having several people ask why I had my Wife’s phone lol) but thought I would also try the only other case I could find made specifically for the FP4. A Swedish business named “Bark” who make cases out of sustainably/responsibly sourced trees. I am glad to report that the case looks and feels fantastic and is little harder than the official FP4 soft case. Hopefully the photos show properly below…
So there is my essay. Hope somebody finds some answers in there about that may either help them out or give them a bit of confidence that they should try out FP!
