New with smartphone + forum, questions about e OS

Hello Forum, I am new here. I recently bought a Fairphone 4, which is also my first smartphone. Privacy is important to me, so I want to be without Google. I don’t know much about it and have a few questions:
I’m thinking of trying e OS. But is there a way back to the pre-installed FP4 Andoid 11 after installing e OS, if I don’t like it?
I read here there is also iode and microG Project. Can anyone help me a little?

Welcome to the Community Forum :+1:

Your username gives me the idea that you might be able to follow and/or join the discussion in this topic:

I think Rolf’s questions might be very similar to yours.

P.S.: Murena is the company that develops /e/OS and also sells the Fairphone 3+ and Fairphone 4 with /e/OS preinstalled on the device.

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Thank you for your answer. Yes I read Rolf’s post, but I did not find an answer to the following, did I?

Is there an easy way back to the pre-installed FP4 Andoid 11 after installing e OS<

There isn’t an easy way back to vanilla FPOS for now

Not until Fairphone releases full system images or someone successfully flashes a phone from backup.

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Currently not … or at least not yet. On the FP3 and FP3+, instructions for" Going Back" came a little while after /e/OS had become available, too. You might know that /e/OS for the FP4 has only been made available 1-2 weeks ago, so I wouldn’t be too pessimistic that “Going Back” instructions will eventually appear on the Fairphone website as well.

https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/4405858189585

Quote from the above article:

Revert to Fairphone OS

Currently, this is not possible. We are working hard on making the software package available to you but for now, contact our support team and they’ll be happy to help you out. Keep this in mind when installing a third-party OS.

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There is no way back to FPOS. It’s a one way ticket . Only a change to iodèOS or later on, if availible, LOS or LOS4mg

If you change to /e/OS you have to live with it. with all the many problems and the few advantages…

What’s your experience in Smartphones, Android, Flashing custom ROMs, Linux or Windows shell, adb and fastboot, etc…?

Thank you for the answers. My experience with my new smartphone is be curious, try, read. Everything works quite well. Have already locked out Google a bit, DuckDuckGo browser, F-Droid and Aurora Store…
For fashing custom ROMs, Linux or Windows shell, adb and fastboot, etc… know a few people who help me.

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OK, if you have or organise help from e few known freinds, then it’s ok.

I can and will only give hints, help or support for iodè and Lineage. But not /e/OS (I hate it. My personal opinion and experience)

If you decide to try iodè then have a look at here:

Regards

your profile indicates a fp3+

When I registered for the forum, there was no option to select an FP4, at least I didn’t find one. Now I have changed it in my profile.

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Just for the sake of completness: whatever Custom ROM you currently install, when you don’t like it you cannot go back to Fairphone OS for the time being.
Just from the installation process, I would go with Iode as well.

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So, YES!

And that’s another strange thing I do NOT understand at /e/OS

Why is so easy for iodè to provide a recovery and a image. And that’s it.

And /e/OS?
The provide a zip file with thousend of files and another thousend more commands to install this image…
Why?

personal

They act like they are developing rocket science
Then they forgot to pont out that it could be nesessary to change the active slot. Otherwise the system hangs in a bootloop.
and if you point it out to them, you will get a message from their community moderator that it is not necessary to point it out.
And if you criticize then you will be banned.

You dislike it for your use case but others are happy with it since years. So it all depends on ones use case and I think there is really no need to slam it over and over again.

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In my personal and simple-user experience (I’ve installed eOS some weeks ago) I like not only the OS but also the possibility to have an alternative to Google universe (contacts, calendar, cloud…). I’ll wait for resolution of the main problems for me: OSMAnd~ and apps that find “security problem”.

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On my last (non-FP) phone, I switched OS and the SIM stopped working. I’m kinda paranoid that this will happen with the FP - I bought it from this website, the SIM has no problems so far, can I confirm that switching to eOS isn’t going to stop the SIM from functioning at all?
Also, how long will FP likely take to release their official packages? Based on how long they took for the FP3?

On my FP2 i have switched between OSes many times and have never had any issues with my SIM cards and have not really seen any reports here that would indicate, this could be a general issue

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OK, how should a OS switch damage the sim card?

Hi and welcome to the forum.
An OS change wouldn’t usually be a suspect when a SIM stops working, unless it’s a very unusual carrier that the OS hasn’t allowed for.
Extremely unlikely.

What network/carrier and location are you. Maybe someone with a similar situation can confirm it works.

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It was on Tesco Mobile, now I’m on giffgaff. I think the issue was that the phone was locked to the carrier, which messed it up.

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From what i can tell it should have been possible to unlock the phone from the network it had when purchased.

So are you about to buy an FP4 and what version did you have previously. You say you bought it from this site. As this is just a user forum did you buy it second hand then?