Experience /e/os/ on FP3, FP4 and or FP5. How do users experience the change?

Discuss The Products
6

Since my post was referenced here I can give some insights as well…

I’ve had android for a few months some years back (actually it was a FP2, but I haven’t had a good experience with it back than) and mostly had iPhones before. So, I wouldn’t say that I am that much familiar with Android at all. But, and I guess this is a huge BUT: I am a developer and I am not afraid of

  • looking at and reading into source code
  • play with and flash devices
  • use a bash or shell if needed
  • etc.

You get the picture.

If I could I would just use pure AOSP, because I don’t even welcome some changes /e/OS made with their version of Android

  • crippled launcher3 in favor of blizz
  • crippled accent color settings in favor of their view on user experience
  • (not sure if I’ll find more of these hacks)
    But since I am not that familiar with Android right now and I am not comfortable enough to build it myself and /e/OS is pretty easy to install I’ll stick with it for now.

I’ve played with the FP5 the last 1-2 weeks and have set it up within 15 minutes. Contacts and calendar gets it’s data from my own NextCloud (using DAVx5), using my own Wireguard VPN, my own Bitwarden password manager (vaultwarden) and Mail is using my own mail server. So, a probable switch to lineageOS (if available) or pure AOSP (when I am competent enough) won’t be that hard. Although I am thankful for the work /e/ is putting into it as well.

And rooted with Magisk to use AFWall+ and using lawnchair as launcher I guess (besides using my own “cloud” services) it is a pretty “safe” and generic Android experience. “safe” in quotes because of the rooting I cannot lock the bootloader again (for secure boot) again - because one cannot have both :man_shrugging:t2:

I still have a lot to learn, but I think Fairphone has finally matured into a capable device and I would take that path again if I had to chose again.

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7

Lidwien,

Cloud is not something I use, have multiple external discs that I use for backups. All that is important to me is on those.
The FP 5 came with Google installed, I’m not a fan of that company, I think privacy is important, they don’t think that way :rage: So the buy is already done, I’m waiting on answer from Fairphone, why I could not choose for another OS?
Good to hear it is running smoothly.
Ergo I need to strip the old OS en instal the new one, but before I do that I wanted to hear from daily users how it works.

Thanks for the reply / bedankt voor de reactie
Rob

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_elpato_9,

Besides the bugs you found, are you satisfied with /e/OS running on Fp5?
Would you recommend it to, not programmers like me, to use it ?

Rob

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Have you read the general information about the system? Its designed for non-programmer to use easily.

I really suggest to also read more in the e/OS forum, your questions so far are not really device specific and you will find a lot more information over there.

There might be a few Apps not be working like some banking Apps, else you have an App store with all Apps, almost zero Google, you can set-up an account with mail and cloud (no must).

The Murena FP4 s only offered through the FP shop since a short time, so the FP5 might follow at some point, else there is no choice to buy it with a different system from Fairphone.

I personally never liked it and rather used Lineage and later Iode OS, however that was rather for the “design”.

When you are not familiar with flashing system I would rather wait until the FP5 is supported by the easy installer.

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10

To specifically address /e/OS… Well, not completely satisfied, because some pre-installed /e/OS apps feel like bloat. But they cannot be uninstalled, since this is also not a thing on android (to uninstall pre-installed apps). I haven’t had the chance to look into their source code, tho, so I also cannot tell what it exactly does. And also it’s “murena” marketing on the boot screen is annoying. So I guess I share some sentiment with @yvmuell - I’d rather use lineageOS, but as of now I think it’s as good as it gets.

Would I recommend it? For me it’s just to new of an experience to finally conclude on that question.

Propbably something like that:
If you’re willing to go an extra mile I guess it’s worth it. And the extra mile is: “not just simply copy’n’paste what you see on your journey but try to learn a little about the tools and always know what you’re doing - it’s on your own risk and you cannot blame anyone else for your own actions”
And who knows, maybe someday in the future you also want to use a purer version of Android on your Fairphone :call_me_hand:t2::call_me_hand:t2::call_me_hand:t2:

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They can.

It is.
ADB (the Android Debug Bridge) offers this.

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I’ve been using /e/OS on FP2 and later FP4 for about 5 years now.
All apps are working for me except MDM (for work environment). Also in-app paying is not possible and it’s difficult or sometimes impossible to buy apps.
Backups are imho more difficult than with FPOS.
Everything else is working for me.
You don’t have to be “a developer” at all to use /e/OS.

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Thx @AnotherElk for your hint - I’ll try it out to remove some bloat with adb then…

14

While everything /e/OS users can say about this will be helpful, there is an objective situation which you need to sort out for yourself anyhow when considering /e/OS or, in more general terms, limiting Google dependencies on an Android phone:

Most Apps which exist now have a certain level of dependency on Google services (background processes on a phone with the usual preinstalled Google stuff) built in.

The key question is:
How dependent are you on such Apps working 100% 24/7?

/e/OS includes an Open Source alternative (called microG), which overall does a very good job in mimicking some of the most needed Google services on the phone to enable Google-dependent Apps to work despite the genuine Google stuff missing. Most of those Apps should work fine.
But not all of those Apps work, and for such Apps which work at a certain point in time, this could break at any time, conceptually as well as observed in reality.
From what I’ve seen so far I guess it is more common for problematic Apps to show problems from the start rather than to first run smoothly and only run into trouble later, but the latter can really happen (seen it myself), and if you are affected it doesn’t help you how improbable this might have been. (I knew this could happen, so it wasn’t a big deal for me.)

If you rely on Google-dependent Apps working 100% for your job, for medical stuff, for any use case you really, really need any such App to work for … don’t try your luck and stick with the stock vendor OS (there can be enough problems with this also as it is, regardless of OS and vendor, but at least there’s a professional business chain of responsibility there to try to fix things).

This leaves the question how to find out potentially problematic Apps.

Aurora Store directly (and anonymously, if chosen so) accesses the Play Store and shows whether Apps are GSF-dependent (GSF = Google Services Framework) in its search results.
This doesn’t say how deeply Google-dependent the App in question is, it may not mean anything in practice or it may mean the world for this App, but it is a prime hint to be careful with this App, if in doubt.

Else there are lists such as [LIST] Apps that work or do not work with microG - Lists - /e/OS community and [LIST] Banking Apps on /e/OS - Lists - /e/OS community … but keep in mind that a Google-dependent App being observed working at a certain point in time may not be working at another point in time.

Why not stay with the stock vendor OS?

In case alternative Android OSes turn out not feasible enough for your use cases, staying with the stock vendor OS is not the end of the world, there are things which can be done to reduce Google dependencies, starting with not using a Google account on the phone (which is possible, you can skip the request for this in the initial setup, or remove the account later in the Settings) and not using the popular Google Apps.
Here’s an old post about this (might need revising now, but it should still serve as an example of how to possibly approach this) … Google Apps keep reinstalling/ reactivating - #34 by AnotherElk

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15

@AnotherElk

Thanks for the reply, lots of things to think about. This is the kind of way I also think, using things that are ok, and throw away the bad stuff. In this, I might have to choose the middleway, which is not bad this forum gives new ideas and that’s what I was looking for. More Ideas are welcome.

Rob

16

I use /e/OS murena 1.7 since 3 weeks on FF5.
It runs very smooth, all apps work (Banking, PayPal, payconic, doccle…)
It`s fast and stable.
For backup trom foto’s etc you can use murena sync. Works like a charme.
Didn’t find any flaws so far.

Kind regards

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17

I’m a long time FP2 / LineageOS user, I’ve used my phone completely degoogled and just installed apps from F-Droid. Over the years, my needs have changed so I really started to miss some of the closed source Apps on my phone. Recently I’ve got an FP4 installed it with the easy installer. Installation was extremely easy, and I must admit, this was the most hassle-fee Android (or Custom ROM) installation I’ve ever had. Everything worked out of the box. The Appstore is awesome. There is a very functional Map App as well which I’ve found much more user friendly than OSMAnd+. I’m not using any e OS cloud features, so I can’t comment on that but the OS itself is really user friendly. I know that some users are not happy with the UI but I find it appealing, it is simplified like the IOS UI. But you can install another launcher if you don’t like it so no problem there. All in all I’m really amazed by /e/ OS!

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18

I’m on /e/OS for 2 years now, beginning with Fairphone 4, now on a Fairphone 5 with preinstalled OS from Murena.

It’s the greatest phone I’ve ever had (I’m on mobile phones since 1996) and I would never change back to Google-Android! All things are working fine if you are willing to change some behavior and get a better privacy as reward.

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I use /e on FP4. Regarding apps there is an app App Loungue which is some sort of aggregator of providers, you can find there all Play store and F-Droid, apps. It lets you install them anonymously (without google account) and provides updates.

The only complaints I have, might be caused by a faulty HW.

  1. Bliss launcher keeps crashing. It’s the default OS launcher. I’ve looked at the app logs. For some reason the app tries to draw an image of a few gigabytes, that’s where it’s crashing. It was working fine for about 4 months then started crashing heavily. At first, I thought it’s a pure software bug brought by an update, but it never went away. Later I’ve found a reddit thread about FP4 commonly developing touch issues, and I think it’s related. Nonetheless I’ve switched to Simple Launcher from Simple Apps, and I’ve never experienced any crash.

  2. Pinch-to-zoom is a hit and miss. My vision is not so great, so I have to zoom in a lot. Many times, the pinch-to-zoom action just doesn’t start, I have to be patient re-trying until it finally kicks-in. Again, I strongly suspect it’s a HW fault. From the reddit thread I’ve learned that the symptoms were, a storm of rapid random touches, and it was fixed by a pure filtering in the software as no human taps that fast…

  3. There’s something not right with the keyboard. When texting I often miss letters. I’m sure I tap them all but for some reason there’s always something missing when I look at what I’ve typed in. For that reason I disabled auto-correction as with it the text is often badly auto corrected.

  4. On 5G the battery is draining fast, doesn’t last a day. Luckily there’s a setting in the OS to limit it to 4G only, so it’s fine. I switch 5G only when tethering internet to the laptop for the increased speed, but then I’m charging the phone.

Apart from the above, everything is fine. I don’t use anything Murena specific, i.e. their cloud. For that reason, I guess I’ll switch to pure LineageOS some day in the future, but it’s not my priority.

I like the Fake location privacy setting. Some apps won’t work without location services, but this setting does the job, it provides fake location (either one you specify, or it’ll choose randomly). It’s also possible to set fake location via developer settings on any Android OS, however many apps detect that and refuse to work.

22

I suppose you’ve already tried to delete data/cache of the Bliss launcher?

Did you try to enable the magnification shortcut in the Accessibility setting? It even works when apps don’t allow ping-to-zoom.

If that’s the reason for the problems you face here then it might help to hold the phone in the hand (and not just put it down on a table). It’s said to improve the responsibility of the screen in these cases.

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Yes, multiple times. Changing home background to the ugly stock one, initially seemed to fix it but it was false observation. The app enters crash loops after some time. Unfortunately resetting data is messing with the icon layout so it’s not a viable solution.

Yes, but it’s not really easy to use, quite the contrary.

Update: I’ve tried today the accessibility on Samsung phone. It’s basically the same, you have to activate the floating accessibility shortcut to be able to initiate the zoom, so I believe it’s native Android feature. Unfortunately, it only confirms that the zoom is unresponsive on my FP4. On Samsung it was smooth and responding, pleasing to use.

24

Can anyone share their experience with eOS and FP5? What about battery life with mobile internet and/or bluetooth?

I would probably never use mobile network for navigation, as I’m using the openstreetsmap app for that and it runs fully in offline mode. But sometimes I stumble across places that the app does not know about and need to use an online service.

Also, I might need bluetooth for pairing up with my car to be able to make phone calls while I’m driving.

25

Welcome to the community forum.
I moved your post here, because here seems more fitting, feel free to already have a look at prior posts.

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26

this sounds encouraging! It’s great that banking and especially PayPal works. How good is the battery life with /e/OS on FP5? Does streaming videos drain the battery really fast?