Does Fairphone 3 support Trusted Execution Environment (TEE)?

Dear Fairphone team,

My phone has just died and I’m searching for a new one to buy and bumped on the FP3.

The new phone needs to support Trusted Execution Environment as it’s a requirement of some applications I use. (apart from being Android 8.0 minimum).

Can somebody please confirm if this requirement is covered by the FairPhone 3?

Thanks and kind regards.

Hello and welcome to the community Forum!
I would like to insist on the fact that this Forum is community driven and that you won’t get an answer from the Fairphone team. If you want an official answer, you’ll have to contact them at https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/requests/new

Nevertheless, you may as well get your answer there on the forum, but it won’t be from Fairphone directly.

That being said, I would think the answer to your question is no, but I don’t know really, wait for a better answer :sweat_smile:

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I don’t know what TEE is, but if you could name an app that needs it someone with an FP3 could just download it and see if it works :slight_smile:

Unfortunately, I can’t do that for you since I am an FP2 owner.

Just look it up :wink:

Seeing this, I don’t think downloading an app will work, because (if I understood well) a TEE must be implemented in the OS (actually be an OS as a whole I think) and be compatible with the processor, which doesn’t seem to be the case for proprietary SoCs like Qualcomm. Thus I was saying the answer may be no. As I read about it, my answer goes more and more towards no.
Other example:
https://source.android.com/security/trusty

Thanks Alex for your thoughts, but I would tend to think that it would be a yes exactly because it seems to be present on almost all devices that have any kind of biometric authentication. It consists basically of an isolated trustwallet to store your biometric info.

The app that requires this support on my case is work related, so nobody here would be able to test it… difficult situation uhn? :smiley:

What is know is that phones like Pixel 4 support it.

Kind Regards,
Kleber

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Ok, so I certainly did not know what a TEE is :sweat_smile:

The Pixel 4 has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 855, and the FP3 a Snapdragon 632. If it is supported on Pixel 4, it may be supported on FP3.

The only way for you to have a sure and official answer would be contacting fairphone support, which I recommend you to do.

Perhaps someone on the forum will know the answer, but you can’t be sure.

Hi there,

since the Kryo Cores of the Snapdragon 632 are based on ARM’s Cortex-A53 and the latter has Trustzone, I would say: yes. But since there is no official documentation von Fairphone itself on this, you will have to get a verdict from the vendor as others have already proposed.

Good luck - and keep us posted.

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Qualcomm has it’s own TEE:

But that, of course, does not mean, that FP implemented it.
I rather would guess, that they did not, as they would have advertised it otherwise; or wouldn’t they?
Probably it’s a question of money and demand.

Thanks for the answer. I guess I’ll find it out by buying, trying (letting you know) and if it doesn’t work I’ll simply return to the store.

I think TEE is not a kind of thing that a company would advertise - at least I haven’t seeing it on others phone brands that do have it, like Google, since Pixelfrom 2 onwards, OnPlus, Motorola, Samsung even for the L models, etc.

So stay tuned :smiley: I’ll let you know the answer here to cease the curiosity it may have risen :smiley:

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I’m new to fairphone…btw, according to my knowledge trusted execution environment provide protection to OS by running separately from the main OS… If fairphone is Android-based, most probably it must be empowered with TEE

So what is the conclusion?

Does the the FP3+ support TEE or not?

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I now have a shiny new FP3 and can say for sure. YES TEE is supported. Thanks also for telling me that fairphone support. Good job!

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