Heavily torn on whether to buy a Fairphone with debloated Android or Pixel with GrapheneOS

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(Originally posted on PrivacyGuides and Graphene forum, wanted to hear a different perspective hence why I (also) posted it here.)

I’m stuck as to whether I should buy a Fairphone or a Pixel 8. On one hand, with a Pixel, I can flash GrapheneOS (better for privacy and security of course), but on the other hand, with the Fairphone, I can remove the battery, which should mean that it doesn’t ping mobile towers and I’m more private. With the Fairphone, I’ll either use ADB to remove all the Google junk and bloatware on Stock Android or flash iodeOS or /e/. I don’t use my phone a lot anyway, so removing the battery often shouldn’t impact my experience. However Graphene gives you more control with permissions. I tried solving this dilemma myself but just couldn’t and I am really stuck.

So. I’m just wondering what phone to get, and if it really is worth it to sacrifice repairability with privacy. Because if I get the Pixel I lose repairability (and ‘support’ an evil corporation but hey I could buy used) but gain more privacy. I don’t necessarily lose privacy with the Fairphone, but the OS might not be as private as Graphene.

My situation is basically I’m a person who doesn’t really want to be tracked everywhere I go (because where I am is none of x company’s concern). I’ve learned about all of this ultrasonic tracking (see the Hated One’s video for more) and I’ve heard of cell triangulation before (and more ways!). I turn off mobile data and turn on airplane mode when I don’t use it (which I know this won’t eliminate all of the tracking, but perfect isn’t the enemy of the good), and of course disable Bluetooth and location when not used. And remove Google Pl*y Services since I don’t need it, etc. And so with the removable battery, it’s nice to be able to properly disconnect.

But then Graphene gives me granular control on what apps to give sensor permission etc to reduce (but of course not fully eliminate) tracking. Of course the best phone is no phone, but I need to carry it around for work most of the time. I’m not someone who needs ultra security or privacy or I’m going to jail tho, so maybe I should take off my tinfoil hat for a while lol.

Hope someone could help me out on this. Thanks!

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I am not sure what you mean with more privacy options an Graphene, since most of their security is not really about privacy, but keeping rouge apps in check.

If you do not want to be tracked, your first line of defence is choosing which app to install and which not, the second line is app permissions. Then you can think about Google and Play Services and may choose apps from F-Droid.

Regarding uXDT you would have to have a receicing app installed with complete mic permissions given by you.

Cell triangulation is just a poor mans GPS with an accuracy of around 150m and only, but always, available to your cell provider.

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Do not consider FP6 if you want to remove the battery often as it requires a screwdriver to remove it.

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As a FP6 owner, which I bought in the hope of no longer feeding Google with my money after the Pixel 6a battery fire fiasco, I recommend getting a Pixel with GrapheneOS.

FP is a huge disappointment, and the actual experience is everything it claims it wouldn’t be. The software / hardware combination has been so poor in my experience that I am now back to a Pixel phone, so they made things worse for the planet than if I had just bought only a Pixel, because now I have double the electronic waste.

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I think it depends a little how serious you are about security and privacy. The Fairphone will never reach the extend of security and privacy you can get with GrapheneOS. No matter if you use Fairphone Android, /e/OS, iodé, etc. Some of the custom ROMs for the Fairphone highly reduce the Google-parts, but you already know yourself that Graphene is the high-end at that point.

Hardware-wise, Google just has a real nice price/value ratio. At a Fairphone you pay for a smaller (nicer?) company, for fair wages of everyone in the production change, for fair working conditions in the mining and production, for simple repairability, etc.

Security patches only come in several weeks to 1,5 months late, compared to a max. a few days on GrapheneOS (and they would claim that Fairphone does not deliver all of them or not completely, I’m not so deep into the topic to fully understand).

As much as I love the intention and the quality of Graphene, I must say they also rage and look down on all competitors, you will probably hear a lot of hate about Fairphone and especially about /e/ at the Graphene forum :slight_smile: I feel like the owner provokes quite a lot of rage and feeds his forum with it, a bit sad.
Try to listen to the calm voices there, they might give you good ideas and background about what Graphene does better or where to look closer at Fairphone about potential issues for you.

Have a little look around at this forum to get different impressions of how much people like or dislike the Fairphone. You will read a few, loud frustrated voices, and some very happy ones.

There’s a market section here in this forum and I’m quite certain you will manage to sell your phone there, usually quite quickly. Help to have no electronic waste sitting at your drawer!

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I’m considering more 4 or 5. That is annoying for the 6 tho.

I’m more your average joe, but I don’t really like it when my location is broadcasted to telephone towers and location tracking, which I heard Graphene you can control the permissions so that should reduce that significantly.

Yea I’ve been told “OH BUT E OS HAS 2 MUCH HECKIN’ TRACKIN’ STUFF! (insert soyjak face here)” and that the fairphone is ‘subpar’ on the privacy guides. Seems really biased towards pixel, and they kept trying to argue against repairability as something that doesn’t matter (considering I don’t use the phone often). Interesting.

Yea I’ll do that. People seem to really want to convince me to use Graphene, which feels a little biased imo. But I’ll consider their arguments.

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The FP4 will be end of life soon when it comes to updates. May or may not affect a custom ROM in a meaningful way but at a minimum you won’t be getting firmware updates anymore.

If you want to get a Fairphone, look at the FP5 at a minimum.

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Yea I’ll be using something like Lineage or /e/ or iodeOS even if they’re not the most secure in the world.

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Those won’t be getting firmware updates either unfortunately, since firmware updates can only be released by the manufacturer.

I’d suggest IodeOS, or if you want as close to a GrapheneOS experience as possible you can look at AXPOS:

They only seem to support the Fairphone 4 and not the Fairphone 5, and they only support Android 13.

There seems to be a request for FP5 support on their repo, and they are looking for testers. Maybe you can live the dream?

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Gotta check it out :eyes:

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How come you wrote that?

OS Updates for A15 should get provided by Google until early 2028 and I don’t see any indication that Fairphone would stop providing updates within the current major version.

But yeah, we don’t know if the FP4 will get A16 or beyond (personally I wouldn’t count on that, but we might get positively surprised, who knows).

And of course, 2 more years from now isn’t much. But then, everybody knows we’re talking about a device released in 2021.
“soon” to me sounds like something within the next 6 months or so. But of course that’s maybe not what you wanted to imply. I just wanted to make it more explicit.

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Privacyguides is literally an echo chamber for GrapheneOS.

In fact, almost all moderators and frequent forum users use it.

Asking questions there means receiving the obvious answer that the best thing to do is give Google your money, buy a Pixel, and flash GOS due to the fact all the alternatives are ridiculously insecure. They also often point at eylenburg web. You can see my view on that page here:

On the other hand, it’s not true that Graphene gives you always more control over apps, as it can be much better if, for example, you install Magisk (root) and disable app trackers with AppManager, which also allows you to remove a large number of permissions, several of which are hidden.

It also allows you to freeze and even uninstall system apps, something that GOS doesn’t allow.

Root also allows you to edit the hosts file to block malicious domains.

In Developer Options, you can enable global sensor deactivation or even use advanced tools such as XPL-EX (a fork of xprivacyLua) to do this individually for apps, preventing them from communicating within a profile and not even knowing which OS you are using (something that even GOS cannot do).

In other words, with a ROM like LineageOS and root, you are the system administrator; it belongs to you. With stock Android or GOS, you are a user, always under the premise of security at the expense of freedom. That is why many free software enthusiasts (not open source) prefer the option I gave to Graphene, although they do not recommend it because of the amount of proprietary software, as it goes against freedom 1 because the system is not yours.

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I, too, was torn between a Pixel with Graphene and a Fairphone. As I care deeply about privacy and security, I ultimately chose GrapheneOS on a Pixel. If Fairphone was capable of meeting Graphene’s strict standards, and therefore capable of running GrapheneOS, I would have easily chosen to buy a Fairphone. I also care about sustainability and even more so about repairability, but ultimately I value the security and privacy options available by using GrapheneOS more. So, as other users have pointed out before, this comes down to whether you personally value security and privacy or sustainability and repairability more. I made my choice, now you can (hopefully) make yours.

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Yea I have noticed that. One user did admit it though, which is nice. And another said while he recommends Graphene, he’s ok with alternatives. They do seem biased but atst they do seem like good points. Apparently rooting your phone is not worth it for security reasons though, even if you do get your hosts file.

But considering I do care about privacy and security, I think I have finally made my choice.

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After heaps of deciding, I have decided to go with Pixel 10 + Graphene.

(Even though I rarely use my phone haha.)

Tbh yes, PrivacyGuides can be biased, but they do raise many good points about GrapheneOS. I don’t like Google either, but I really want to try GrapheneOS. And at the same time I don’t really care about using a device where it hasn’t had security updates for years, I’ll literally use said device (and follow @default’s lineage process) until it’s impossible to repair for a specific reason and it completely stops working. And plus it’s better to get some excellent privacy for a specific amount of time (e.g., 7 years) than less privacy with an okay operating system (tbh iode doesn’t look half bad, of course not as good as graphene), hence further solidifying my decision to go for graphene. I love Fairphone’s mission, but I care more about my privacy. Besides, in a few years, if I want to, I could always sell my Pixel and snag a Fairphone if I want to. But of course that’s up to future me to decide haha.

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If anyone else reading considers regular removal of the battery on a FP: the back cover on the FP4 doesn’t feel like it’ll withstand daily removal without breaking.
However, I’m pretty sure there’s no signaling to cell towers when on airplane mode, as there are no measurable radio emissions on airplane mode.

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Even though you have decided I’d like to chime in, if only for others who are interested in this topic.

I was or actually am again in the same ballpark - you could call it a dilemma even - as the OP. I have a FP4 that I used with CalyxOS (which was my favorite ROM). I once needed a burner phone, so I bought a used Pixel 8 and installed GrapheneOS. Then CalyxOS went dark, so I switched my daily driver to the P8 with GrapheneOS.

While a P8 and GrapheneOS is the most secure option, this doesn’t mean that it’s automatically the most private one. For one, they outright refuse to do anything regarding firewalling and tracker blocking. If you want or need google services you have to install their “sandboxed” google play. It might be sandboxed, it still is proprietary closed-source garbage full of tracking cr*p.

I have recently installed /E/OS on my FP4. While I really dislike their bliss launcher and the bloat it comes with, I very much appreciate their Privacy App. They block trackers on the OS, and you get an overview of how many trackers of which apps have been blocked. That’s really nice. Also, they use microG, which is Open Source and at least for me works flawlessly even with all my banking apps (of which I have many). I’d take microG over sandboxed GPlay anytime. I can’t even express how disgusted I am every time I look at that garbage GooglePlay App. Regarding the bliss launcher, I replaced that with Fossify Launcher, which is great. I also rooted with Magisk and removed all the bloat.

So what’s the dilemma? GrapheneOS only runs on Google Hardware, pretty much relies on proprietary GooglePlay cr4p - which also makes it the most compatible ROM -, outright refuses to do anything against trackers in apps and web, is a toxic community that attacks everyone who does not agree with them. They are the most secure, though, in their own very narrow definition of security.

/E/OS has better arguably tracking protection, uses microG, unfortunately comes with bloat, is way slower with security updates.

Pick your poison.
Right now the FP5 is heavily discounted, so I am really considering switching back to FP with /E/OS.

My dream ROM would be based on GrapheneOS, include a firewall, OS-level tracking protection like /E/OS, and alongside sandboxed GPlay would also offer a sandboxed microG as alternative, so you can choose which one you need / want, maybe even have both in different user profiles. Alas, this probably will never happen …

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Personally for me I don’t really need a tracker blocker as I barely use the phone anyways and I only use Google Play stuff for work. I would definitely use Aurora Store 10 times out of 10, but I heard their sandboxed google play services is BETTER than MicroG.

I also will try to use open source software (pretty much possible for personal; and for my friends on WhatsApp I’ll put it on a different profile & be a pain to respond :wink:) and don’t even use the browser on my old phone. So I really don’t think it’s needed, but more a nice to have for me.

But it is unfortunate that they don’t have a tracker blocker like iode or /e/ (I think Calyx also has one?), maybe they think they don’t need one? I’ll try to put in a feature request on their forum or wherever.

(Also can you send me any links to where the graphene devs said this? Either I’m really lazy or I just couldn’t find it.)

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As far as privacy is concern, MicroG is much better than sandboxed Play Store.

The first one is completely open source. However, the second one is entirely closed source.

A malware into a sandbox doesn’t make it good.

On the other hand, MicroG could make these connections at most. It’s well documented:

Regarding sandboxed Play Store:

Take into account that this spyware can know you’re using GOS, and collect time, network, country, Android version, ISP name, IP and so on, like any other app.

Due to the fact apps can see and communicate with apps into a profile, many info can leak to Google servers.

GOS developers and users recommend this closed source malware because of signature spoofing and because it’s difficult to introduce it out of GOS, in others ROMs.

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:open_mouth:
Interesting.

Atp Graphene should definitely consider giving the user other options, however idk if they will

I’ll be using this stuff in a 2nd profile though.

Still wanting to use Graphene though because of the other privacy options you get such as sensor blocking and all that, I do value that a lot

~

Also doesn’t rooting make the phone less secure? Many privacy people say that rooting your phone is a really bad idea. Is this true?