I don’t think so. I can remember having read this several times, even from the beginning of FP open OS. Already then, they said that they won’t officially support FP open OS - in the sense of the FP support team not being able (or willing) to help people out with FP open OS-specific problems.
To put it simply, we want to offer you the ability to choose between the Google experience and the freedom of open source. Both versions are officially supported by Fairphone
Although I admit not everything in that article can be taken as gospel truth:
The operating system has a special look and feel developed together with Kwamecorp, as well as a few custom apps and features for an improved user experience. All features can be disabled by the user.
Edge-swipe, Mood-Changer (discontinued) and the lockscreen widget could never be disabled.
But again:
###Is Fairphone supporting both the default and the open source version equally?
Yes, Fairphone fully supports both versions.
(Software updates may not be released at the same dates for the two versions.)
You’re right, that’s an official statement. However, I do remember a statement within the lines of what I said before (unfortunately, my search for it wasn’t successful, and it might be outdated now) and which matches the quote from above:
Oh so it’s only for FP2? Bummer… 
Well on the FP1 you pretty much have “Open OS” preinstalled. It comes rooted and without GAPPS. 
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Aren’t edge swipe etc. part of the launcher? I don’t have edge swipe here on my phone, so it surely can be “disabled” by installing an alternative launcher.
Well that’s not what I’d call disabling. Disabling sounds like you just have to switch a toggle somewhere in the settings or you have to disable an app that is solely responsible for that function (disabling it doesn’t disable other functions).
PS: But anyways once Android 6 is out all those functions will be gone anyway! 
Oh OK. Seems like a going back to have a closer system, no?
Well as I explained in “Why is Open OS not preinstalled already?” it was a necessary step to get official google support, but everybody has the option to easily switch to Open OS to live a free live.
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First: thanks to @paulakreuzer for this thread- I appreciate it!
I am happily using FP Open OS from the beginning! And I had a phone-contact with the support-team in last autumn concerning the call-not-send-bug which could get solved immediately by the help of the support-staff. To me there is no reason to doubt that FP would help me concerning FP Open OS in future. And I am thankful for that!
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Nice to hear! I hope to get the same experience next time.
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Hi, and thanks for this post!
One thing: you say that with EFIDroid it should be easy to install both OSs without losing any data and switch between them at reboot. But as long as I get it you need root access to install EFIDroid, so in any case this cannot be done with the builtin FO OS. Am I right? Being able to run Open OS and test it without (or before) giving up the standard OS, with its automated updates etc., would be a great thing and would probably let many of the not-so-techy do the switch.
You may be right. I am using EFIDroid the other way around: I started with FP Open OS and now have FP OS as a secondary OS. This way around it’s super easy.
One thing you could probably do is use TWRP (you don’t need to flash it) to do a backup, then switch to Open OS, then install EFIDroid and FP OS and then restore the backup for your FP OS installation.
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This sound like a splendid idea. But (how) is it possible to select FPOS as “restore target” within TWRP when having the system in a multiboot configuration created with EFIDroid?
Whenever you boot you’ll start at EFIDroid, there you can select where to boot to. If you go to recovery you’ll get two options, for both OSes.
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Thanks for the guide, Paul.
After 11 months of FP2 OS (without any serious problems), this thread took away my fears of switching to Open OS and I did it.
I still think it is unnecessarily complicated to switch and I do not look forward to performing an update like in this thread.
Also I’m slightly disappointed in the amount of apps not being available for F-Droid, so for me there’s no way to use my Fairphone without Play Store. Many of the equivalent apps in F-Droid do not work or are complete trash compared to a lot of apps I use from the Play Store.
So the entire OpenGAPPS thing to me seems like an unnecessary workaround and makes me feel like this is really not the way things are meant to be.
Still, I’ll keep my Open OS because I like the idea. Have not run into a case where I’d need to root though.
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You’ll only need to do that if you modify your system (e.g. install opengapps or xposed) and even then it’s not as complicated as that guide makes it look. Basically everything you flashed (installed via recovery) to modify your OS you’ll have to flash again after the update.
About the apps: You can use the Yalp Store (from F-Droid) to download any app from the Play Store without having to install all the spying Google Services.
I personally like the apps from F-Droid a lot. They are not as fancy as Play Store Apps, they don’t have such a polished design, but they do their functions just as well and usually with much less resources needed, as they don’t constantly run shady processes in the background.
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I’ve tried to follow that but I can’t find efidroid in F-Droid. Is there something I missed here? Will I have to install access to play store to go in here?
There are many ways to get apps from the play store without accessing it directly: