Don't buy a FP3 yet if you don't like stock android or Google!

If you’re looking at the respective topics here … what is this “patience”? Is this even English :smiley: ?

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Doesn’t that mean: nothing to expect from Fairphone!?

The step-by-step guide to unlock the bootloader is already there - not from the company but from the community. The rest of the answer just expresses their expectation that the community-projects somehow will succeed to get their OSes running on the FP3. If I understand the development threads correctly this involves a lot of reverse engineering - because of lack of information from the vendor and/or manufacturer. This FAQ answer does not seem to justify any hope that there is something to come from Fairphone.

Until revoked by Fairphone, this statement still stands …

“We are currently investigating the possibility of making Fairphone Open available on Fairphone 3.”

At least you can expect a statement on the matter once they are done investigating.

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True. But I think this is a (related but) different topic. I understand that developing FP OOS requires some effort and takes time. . (Edit: FP OOS is not mentioned in the FAQ answer.) But I struggle to understand why Fairphone can’t support the communities by providing the needed information Insofar I agree with that comment above:

Well, I agree they could have blunted that attack vector towards themselves somewhat with some quicker effort.
And I would agree it would be nice to know what’s keeping them busy right now preventing them from doing so.

But it’s not that they can’t support that, they just didn’t yet …

We are working towards making available:
a flashable image for download and manual flash

… which was an important missing piece as far as I understood and would have helped in time, but community heroics yielded quicker results now …

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We managed to boot to a GSI (lineage OS).

The best of both worlds … we’re on our way to a custom ROM without much Google … Yay! … but it isn’t entirely ready suitable for the mass yet, so people can still complain about the unjustifiably dire situation in technicolor … Yay! :wink: .

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Actually, this is a custom ROM without Google

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Well, that info bit was relatively new :wink: .

GSI = Generic System Image … but it didn’t sound entirely convincing to me, more like a basic testing environment.

True ^^, I’ll edit.
GSI are dev images, you’re right. But it is still a custom ROM without GAPPs. And I prefere a dev image than g**gle. Some GSI (e.g. Bliss, Resurrection) are official supported image. And they haven’t any Gapp. What was the meaning of the thread ^^

The last problem is about the qualcomm libs, and their possible privacy issue

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Fairphone Open wasn’t available right away either, nor was SFOS or other custom OSes such as LineageOS. Community OSes are made for and by the community. They don’t come with warranty. Anything can happen when you run such. Which is a Bad Thing ™ in a corporate or business environment. There’s a plethora of people who can/will only run official firmware.

That’s exactly the point of this conversation: Fairphone Open OS is an officially supported OS without Google, but it is only available for the Fairphone 2 at the moment. We’re’ getting upset because we want a phone that respect our privacy and even if it looks like this will be achievable thanks to the community, it’s always some hacky unofficial non-supported ROM, and that’s very different from what Fairphone used to provide with the FP2. Because it was available for FP2, we were excepting it for FP3 and are now disappointed.

Why doesn’t Fairphone communicates on that topic and reassure us that they are working on it? Is it impossible for them to achieve because they delegated to much work to another company? That’s worrying.

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Leaving aside the question why people would get this agitated over something like that “while other children are starving” (Aw, childhood memories :innocent:) …

“We are currently investigating the possibility of making Fairphone Open available on Fairphone 3.”

@lorahaspels: Can Fairphone already communicate some kind of intermediate state of the investigation, or what kind of factors would play into a decision?

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But other than they did with FP2, they made it clear from the beginning, that they are not offering FPOOS, but just investigating the possibilities.
If you expected otherwise, you obviously didn’t really pay attention.
So please get upset with yourself, because you missed that info or took “investigating a possibility” for “nearly there”.
Please don’t hold someone else accountable for your unwarranted expectations.

Take a look at this thread started in August 2019:

And to that question:

I guess, they have enough to do. And maybe, just maybe, they are not even working on it (yet); especially since it seems that the community will offer LOS in a few weeks time.
Plus: Please keep in mind, that only 5% of the FP2 users were running the phone on FPOOS. So that kind of information might be really way down on the agenda, when there are more pressing needs like the supply chain, accessories, support requests etc (all just my guessing of course).

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Given the amount of time the ‘investigation’ took already, I see two possibilities:

  1. Fairphone AS management for some marketing related reason decided to not make Fairphone Open available the FP3. But they hesitate to tell us because of the likely back slash.
  2. There are legal reasons. In particular, Fairphone may have signed a contract with Google that contains some ‘interesting’ by-laws. E.g., the contract may forbid fairphone to sell FP3 with android but without the full set of google apps. The contract may also prohibit them to provide ready made recipes on how to set up an alternative OS. In addition, there is probably a comprehensive gag clause included, aka non disclosure agreement (NDA). The NDA may be very comprehensive in that the very existence of the contract may already be subject to it.

Unfortunately, the second scenario seems more likely than the first. I could imagine, that the ‘investigation’ is looking at the exact wording of the contract at. There may or may not be a loop hole. Other possibilities may involve a fee to be paid to google for every no-GAPPS fairphone. But now I am completely in Speculativeland.

To be honest.
There you were from the first letter of your posting.

Because there are so many more possible scenarios, that everything is just wild guessing.
Examples? Here you go:

  • They are in the process of developing another device or accessories, which is taking much more time than anticipated.
  • They ran into severe problems with FPOpen.
  • They are currently developing special/individualized OS solutions for FP3 business phones they sold or will be selling to (large?) companies.

And just keep in mind, there is no solid ground for any one of those possibilities or any other one might come up with. :smile: :wink:

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Though that should be not allowed anymore after the EU antitrust ruling against Google in 2018, AFAIK. (okay they wanted to appeal that and I don’t know the recent results. That said, the new search engine selector screen already popped up.)

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Don’t want Google services? Try the new Huawei Mate 30 Pro :stuck_out_tongue:

Hey @hirntot !
Good news! Don’t be too much desperate, there will be very soon a 100% unGoogled OS with nice android UX compatible with FP3!
Look here: https://mastodon.social/interact/103912398236907028
cheers :slight_smile:

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Well, reading this article here (assuming it’s still valid today) leads me to believe they will never be able to offer an alterative OS: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/07/googles-iron-grip-on-android-controlling-open-source-by-any-means-necessary/

But then I’m also wondering, why they even suggested to “look into” alternatives when they should have known the contract from the beginning.