I just asked an AI about phones that arrive by default with an open source Android and it told me about Fairphones. I had never heard of them before (only about Pinephones). Everything sounds too good to be true, so I have a few questions. I’m leaning towards buying a Fairphone anyway but I’m still gonna ask them.
What’s the difference between FP5 and FP5 /e/OS? Is FP5’s OS not open source? I know it has Google apps on it. In principle I don’t mind Google apps, all I want is for ALL of them to be fully uninstallable (if I decided so), as if they were never installed in the first place, without any limitations.
Does FP5 support typing in Cyrillic? I was told some smartphones don’t, so now I have to ask about that too. The interface will probably be in English (it’s hard to explain why, it’s a Google’s idiotism), but I’ll most definitely use a keyboard with my native language (aside from English) which is Bulgarian.
About the microSD card - the FP5’s description on the website didn’t say what’s the maximum size of microSD card the phone supports. Currently I have a 512GB microSD card in my Redmi and I’d very much like to simply move the SD card (and the SIM cards) to my new phone without having to buy a new one or visiting the mobile operator to reissue the SIM cards.
Speaking of SIM cards, does FP5 support nano SIM? IIRC Redmi Note 10 Pro uses nano SIMs (dual) and just like the SD card, I’d like to move these to the new FP5 as well.
I read there are updates until 2031. What happens after that? I doubt I’ll use the phone that long but who knows, so I have to ask: will the phone still work after 2031? Or is there a “programmed aging”, like with all the Xiaomi phones, which is meant to force you to buy a new one?
The camera isn’t that important in principle (I hate selfies, so I take pictures of other things) but I’d appreciate a camera which can take a picture of a printed document without blurring the letters, whether you’ve used flash/HDR or not.
Sometimes, when I have the free time for that, I go to drag races and take pictures and videos of the participating cars. The last time I tried to take a video of the participants, the stupid Redmi Note 10 Pro didn’t let me, it kept crying about overheating. I had to remove it from the silicone case and even so, it lasted only about 10 minutes shooting a video under the sun. So this question is: how does FP5 handle heat? My friend’s phone (HONOR Something…) kept shooting without a problem (and without removing it from the silicone case) the whole time we were on the drag strip - 4-5 hours.
How many Ah does the battery go with a single charge? Anything from 5000+ is OK for me. I have ways of extending the battery life for a single charge, but I still gotta ask.
Yes, fairphone os is not open source. /e/ os is a fully de-googled OS for android phones.
If Google board does then yes, you will be able to type in Cyrillic.
It will work just fine, but do not format it as internal storage. The fairphone only supports 1 physical sim + 1 sd card.
Yes, 1 (one) physical sim card + esim
No more security updates, it will work fine but apps will be more demanding and the battery will degrade over time and there could be another “sudden death” issue that the fp3s had later on happen with the Fp4/5, but there is no software slowdown or anything.
I… don’t personally make too much images but there is an image gallery of pictures made by the fp5. will link it there.
ad 1: Fairphone delivers the FP5 with their fully Google-certified “Android OS” by default. You cannot remove Google apps from it (unless you are a really well-versed IT guy). /e/OS is a degoogled Android by default which can never guarantee 100% compatibility with all Android apps, but spends a lot of effort into supporting as many Android apps as possible (I use /e/OS myself, and currently there is only one app I cannot run).
ad 2: Perhaps this screenshot I just took on an FP5 is enough for an answer:
ad 3: I have been able to use a 2TB SDXC card in an FP5. From what I know, 2TB is the maximum the SDXC standard allows.
ad 4: The FP5 supports one nanoSIM. The other SIM you can use with it would be an eSIM (a virtual SIM, not a physical one).
ad 5: Fairphone aims to support the OS beyond 2031 (they aim for 2033). Once Fairphone has to stop providing further updates, the phone will still work, but in a way “programmed aging” will come from the “outside world” – sooner or later app developers will no longer support older Android versions. Custom ROMs (like /e/OS or others) have in the past always been able to provide longer support for the OS than Fairphone themselves (Google certification is extremely demanding for Fairphone development, and given custom ROMs do not strive for it, they can support longer), and I would think this will probably be the case for the FP5, too.
ad 6: Quick document (letter) shot (with just dim light) with the FP5:
The OS is mainly open source (see e.g. Fairphone 5 Android 13 and 14 source code build) but contains blobs (mainly SoC vendors drivers).
FPOS is with Google apps (can be disabled; uninstallable (for advanced users), but “fully”… - don’t know)
/e/OS is without Google data leakage
There are more options, see oslist
Phone is designed to allow installation of custom OS
I suppose, yes. Maybe there’s some here already using it…
512 GB SD card is possible
Phone has one nano sim slot and supports in addition one resin
There’s IMHO no planned obsolescence. FP will try to publish updates as long as possible. It will probably end when available firmware blobs for SoC can no longer be used with then current Android
Phone might IMHO overheat under high load and hot weather temperature
I wouldn’t go that far. It involves the command line, yes, but it is doable and has been done by many non-really-well-versed-IT-people .
Note that even though it’s from their forum, this is not /e/OS-specific, this is the standard way provided by Android to do this.
I think not every Android OS provides the package name in the settings like /e/OS does, though, but there are other ways to know it like the Google Play Store URL of an App (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.android.gm → package name com.google.android.gm), “bloatware” lists in the internet or App/package manager Apps.
Hi and welcome.
Just a note on the battery. What really counts for most users is how long the phone will run on a single charge. Obviously battery capacity is a factor but so are all the hardware components, apps, radio environment and usage habits.
If you read around the forum I think you’ll find most users get through the day easily and many far more. This morning I’ve been browsing continuously for 3 hours and charge has decreased by about 20%. If doing nothing charge drops by less than 1%/h.
By “fully uninstallable apps” I meant for them to be removed as if they were never installed. Bc Google’s version of “uninstall a Google app” means removing all updates for the app but still have it - like with Chrome, you can’t remove it, you can just remove all updates for it and it updates back with the next system update.
I’m using Arch on the PC and I have (for the moment) 273 aliases with 192 bash scripts, so I’m not afraid of CLI. In fact, I’ve turned into CLI commands many of the things you can do with GUI bc CLI is faster and more efficient. CLI used to scare me when I was a Mint user 10 years ago. Considering Android is a modified ARM Linux with sudo removed, it can’t be that hard to uninstall an app. All it takes is figuring out which package manager it uses and then use Termux to remove the apk.
About the battery - my usual settings are like this: battery saver on, all apps with a setting to be closed when not used, Nova Launcher, notifications OFF for all apps, low brightness (in the most of the environments).
Even with these settings, such things as on the screenshot are a regular thing for Xiaomi. With the FB app - bad, without it - even worse. It’s like the damn Chinese dictators are punishing me for uninstalling the FB app. I didn’t even touch the phone in these 32 hours, it was locked with the screen off under the pillow cuz I was… otherwise occupied. And despite all of that, this happens quite often and frankly I’m sick of it! The phone is less than 2 years old, so you can understand why this sickens me and I wanna change it: https://i.imgur.com/E3g8ONy.jpeg Unfortunately other phones aren’t any better (or much better), so changing the Xiaomi with another clone of it is kinda pointless. The Nokia was somewhat OK, but it had a hardware stroke a few days after its warranty expired.
And by “programmed aging” I meant things like this: you use the phone without updates just fine for some time and then suddenly, out of nowhere, it starts showing the root partition to be “full” (which clearly it is not) and the entire RAM is also “full”. This happened with my first Redmi phone I gave my sister to use it. It was fine for a few years without updates, in fact it was faster than many of its modern brothers and then bam - it can’t be used because it’s all “full”, it can’t be cleaned, no matter how many times you try and I’m the British queen.
That’s what I call “programmed aging”.
.
Considering Android is a modified ARM Linux with sudo removed, it can’t be that hard to uninstall an app. All it takes is figuring out which package manager it uses and then use Termux to remove the apk.