I have got a new fairphone 4 and I want to switch to a degoogled Operating System (OS), but there are a few things that are not entirely clear to me. In particular, there is the suggested e/OS I would like to try.
First I am interested in general experiences. What kind of drawbacks do I have to expect.
In particular:
Do I get firmware updates with e/OS?
When I install an alternative OS I have to unlock the bootloader. So far so good, but I have read that some apps (especially banking apps won’t work with an unlocked bootloader). Hence, the question: “Can I lock the bootloader after the installation (without bricking the phone)?”
Partly a repetition of the previous item: Can I use banking apps?
Do I have to use such an online account from the e/Foundation?
Will the battery life be affected by e/OS? (does it last longer because of less connections (to google) or does it last shorter because of bad optimisation?)
Is there a nice step by step tutorial for the installation of e/OS on the fairphone?
Can I switch back to the fairphone OS, if the e/OS doesn’t do it for me?
Maybe there is already a thread, where all (or most) of my concerns are answered. In that case just send me the link.
This should be the case. Fairphone and the e foundation are official partners.
I’m not entirely in the loop here, since I don’t have a Fairphone 4. A forum search might help. I’ve seen there was some trouble with locking the bootloader, but it doesn’t look to me like this should be the expected behaviour. Teething troubles with the still fairly new /e/OS port on the Fairphone 4 perhaps.
Depends on the banking App. And don’t count on it 100%, because apart from banking Apps being notoriously suspicious about running on Custom ROMs like /e/OS most of them expect Google services to be on the phone, which /e/OS doesn’t have. /e/OS tries to mimic Google services with the help of microG, which may work well for a particular Google-dependent App, or not, or not all the time. There are no guarantees.
No, that’s entirely optional. I’m using /e/OS on two phones, and I don’t have such an account.
Both theories are sound.
The battery of the Fairphone 4 should be surely good enough for smartphoning with /e/OS. Battery life is heavily depending on individual users and their use cases. What might be true for one might not be true for the other.
I can only say that /e/OS gets Fairphone’s firmware updates on the Fairphone 3/3+. I can’t imagine this not being the case on the Fairphone 4.
In the end this is only confirmable in practice once /e/OS on the Fairphone 4 got updated firmware somewhen. Firmware updates usually don’t happen as often as regular Android security updates (which the e foundation of course puts into /e/OS by themselves).