Feels quite unprofessional

Hi there. I just bought a Fairphone and the experience was not like I could recommend that to any of my friends. First of all I already have an account with fairphone - why do they want an additional account for the forum??? Is this yet another company involved? I consider that unprofessional and unnecessarily inconvenient. Then there is a company involved called adyen com which sends emails exclusively in HTML format. How can you claim you are privacy conscious and your phones are secure and then send emails containing HTML? Of course the OS on the Fairphone full of Google is highly questionable as well. Luckily there are alternatives but only if you have the skills though. IMHO Fairphone should be honest and not claim or give the impression their phones would be any different regarding privacy from other Google infested ones. The only difference is the Fixit score and some materials (which is why I went for it). Just my 2 cents for the road ahead.

I cant even contact the fairphone support because they have Google (and facebook and Instagram … really fairphone???) running all over their website which of course any sane browser fully blocks. Quite disappointing. Therefore my little rant here in the hope it reaches fairphone at some stage and makes them rethink their approach to privacy.

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Welcome to the community forum.

The forum is a completely different instance, and you have to recreate a account. This forum is merely just space given by Fairphone on their servers, but is entirely community driven.

Do they? Where?

Which is already quite much. Tell Apple and Samsung and the others to do the same.

They don’t follow this forum officially as it is entirely community driven. I didn’t have any problem with the support page although I block quite a few things in my browser, so I don’t understand. Nobody ever complained about that AFAICT. Could you provide screenshots of what you mean?

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Hi pete8888,

I understand you are frustrated because you bought a product you were not knowing well and that not not reach your expectations. That’s not fun!
It is clear that I would never buy a FP3 with G00gle android.
However, you have options:

  • You send the FP3 back within 14 days and get your money back
  • You find another OS (i.e. /e/) which better keeps your privacy.
  • More options ?

I hope you will finally enjoy the option you choose. Good luck!

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I’m sure I did at some point. The support pages are in the Cloudflare cloud, which is about as evil as Google. Plus users shouldn’t have to block all these trackers in the first place. Why does Fairphone need to spy on their users anyway? Especially those who don’t know how to protect themselves.

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Hi, I understand your frustration although I think they are not explicitly advertising any kind of privacy focus with their phones. Regarding the trackers on the official website - and also in this forum by the way - I sent a mail months ago to the support and they responded that they might take it into consideration in the future but it appears the priorities are different currently. These “free” tools are just too convienient to use I guess. :wink:

Oh and: (sorry for advertising again) You might want to have a look at e.g. /e/ like mentioned above, it works really smooth with the FP3 for me and it’s much less G00gle infected than the default OS.

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Thank you for the suggestion of e. The problem with e in contrast to GrapheneOS is that you cannot lock the boot loader after installing it which is a security risk plus some apps dont even work with an open boot loader. I have no clue whether an insecure deGoogled phone is better for privacy or a secure Google infested one. I guess the days when laymen could make an informed decision on privacy for themselves are gone.

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Where did you get this information from as it’s not true. Have a look at the last step of the installation instructions.

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I second this question, as this misinformation seems to be out there somewhere and it would be nice to know where … Locked Bootloader Fairphone - Fairphone - /e/OS community.

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Thank you for the info. That would be great. I cant find it right now but it was discussed on the e forum. Now it seems that indeed for the FP3 the boot loader can be relocked. For other phones like the Pixel that is not possible if I am not mistaken because people who tried it reported to have bricked their phone.

Is the boot loader also relocked when using the e Easy Installer?

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That’s definitely not true like the others also mentioned. On my phone I use /e/ and the bootloader is locked. So don’t worry, that works.

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@Snafu What phone are you using? As I said, people with other phones than FP3 have bricked theirs be relocking the bootloader after installing e or LineageOS.

No offense, but pretty much the only thing here that feels unprofessional is in fact your email. The company and its products is called Fairphone, not Privacyphone. Fairphone’s USP is fairer electronics, not privacy. And frankly, a company / project as small as Fairphone could and would not exist without Google’s investment in Android and the Android app ecosystem, like it or not.

But it is of course a good thing that you have bought a Fairphone. So welcome to the community forum. And you will find plenty of input here about how to ungoogle your phone. Enjoy.

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… and Android would not exist without the massive amount of Linux volunteers. To miss that point is “No offense, but pretty much the only thing here that feels unprofessional…” :slight_smile:

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Linux will never ever be adopted by the consumer because it is an OS destined to forever catch up with compatibility.

Without google helming the project the linuxoids would continue being happy clacking at their keyboards in the dark of their rooms, compiling some obscure codes only they could enjoy.

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True, but that is not the point here IMHO. Open source and privacy are not the main goal of Fairphone. FP’s goals, the way I see them, are (1) to set an example for the industry in terms of fairness in materials and production; (2) to discard the buy-use-throw away attitude in favor of a buy-repair-recycle logic. They care about free software and privacy but they came to compromise. They shipped a google-free OS on FP1, they offered the FP Open OS with FP2 and now they are partnering with the e-foundation to deliver /e/OS for FP3. But most of the people want Android and its app ecosystem on their phone. They need to sell their phones to achieve their main goals and have a larger impact. I think about 5% of FP2-owners installed the FPOpenOS (the number can be mistaken, correct me in case).
My personal point of view here is that I understand Fairphone but I’m one inside the 5% that is using a FP2 with Lineage OS and microg. And when my FP2 won’t work anymore I’d like to buy a possibly google-free phone. But my bother just bought a FP3 and I don’t think he would, had the FP3 being shipped with a custom AOSP-based system.

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I fully agree with @teezeh, your comments here are about the only thing that qualifies as “unprofessional”. I can understand you have concerns about privacy but where did you see that Fairphone advertises itself to be privacy focused? At this stage at least the task of developing a phone with a unique approach to it’s design is quite a remarkable feat to do. But you also want the privacy part taken care of for you, and that’s great! You were presented with an alternative to that, /e/OS but then you continue with your rant about how you cannot block the bootloader and yada yada yada…

Well, if you had even bothered to look around a little bit you would have found the /e/ documentation and how to flash /e/ on a Fairphone 3. It took me about 10 seconds and a single search to find it. It’s not a very long page and at the bottom you’ll see very clearly:

The last command will ask you to confirm on the device to lock the bootloader. Select LOCK THE BOOTLOADER with Volume + and valid with Power.

So there you go my friend, you have done exactly 0 research before coming here and start ranting and complaining at everything and without providing any sources to your claims. Now I may not speak for everyone but I don’t think you are in any position to call anyone unprofessional.

Please don’t take the impression that I speak for Fairphone, this is 100% my personal opinion. If you agree with the causes Fairphone is fighting for do continue to support them. Do continue to provide feedback and express your concerns. But do so in a more polite way. Give the benefit of the doubt. Consider that making a phone may be challenging enough as it is without the massive resources companies like Samsung, Apple or Google have. Even more so when they are taking a unique approach that has never been done (go ahead and read about project ARA, who funded it, and where it ended).

Those days are not gone. Feel free to ask questions.

Welcome to the forums.

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Well, not anymore in house because they realized it is hard. (I don’t blame them)
They did what they could with the FP2 (more then the FP1) and gave the community the means to do so.
With the FP3 they outsourced it to eelo but kept the doors kinda open for the community.

This shows that privacy and OSS is important to FairPhone:

We’re delighted to announce our new partnership with /e/ Foundation for an open-source operating system that prioritizes user privacy.

I can’t comprehend people who argue against peoples desire for privacy or simply not to support alphabet or amazon to be the only “choice” you have.
In my opinion nether amazon nor alphabet are fair.
Fairness does not stop at the factory gate, there is a lot more involved.
And it is recognized by Fairphone

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I don’t know what the official number was either, but it definitely didn’t include LOS users.

I can of course only speak for myself: I am using a FP3 and manually flashed /e/ without any problems or bricking. Like descibed in the manual, I locked the bootloader after flashing, all good.

@existentionaut This was surely true back in the 90s or earlier. Try a modern Linux, no comparison.

Apart from that: Please guys, relax. I like this forum because it is a friendly one, with lots of respect and above average consciousness. Let’s not change that.

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Just realized they’re also using G00gle to send the forum notifications/mails:

Received from mail-lf1-x161.google.com (mail-lf1-x161.google.com [IPv6:2a00:1450:4864:20::161]) 

:man_facepalming:

Nogo, directly switched off in the profile settings.