I love the fairphone for the swappable battery, and with my trusted Samsung Galaxy S5 (sic!) becoming too underpowered for LineageOS I started to migrate to fairphone hardware. Here is to many years to come!
However: It arrived with 25 GB already occupied.
I can’t comprehend what takes 25GB, a current LineageOS has half of that; I find 12-16GB acceptable. The rest must be bloat!?
Please correct me if I am wrong.
What options do I have to reduce the bloat?
Is an /e/ installation somewhere in the 16GB range?
Please also correct me if I am wrong in my understanding of the capabilities:
I can root a Fairphone 4 with either Fairphone OS or /e/
LineageOS support is not current (a version behind, no wide adoption of the fairphone in the LineageOS community) Oh, I was very wrong on that! Editing to not have this fake news prominently in the to post
getting a bootloader unlock code is easy and quick (had a bad experince with Huawei support in that respect)
a spare battery was not in stock when I ordered a few weeks ago, but such a shortage is temporary and I can typically expect availability (in the future)
if I have an older Vanced YouTube apk around I might be able to get it running
with a “rooted” OS I will be able to install an AdBlocker
Some of you will be around in the community for some while, I would appreciate your input here. Haven’t inserted my SIM card yet und so far use the fairphone4 as paperweight Surely that isn’t the ideal state
OH, marvellous, many thanks for this “sounding board” input, it is much appreciated.
Strange that I went off the track regarding “LineageOS”, as a long-time user.
The latest next weekend I should be able to follow-up on the pointers, and will phase-in the use of the fairphone.
Just one last comment depending of what you will finally do and install: be very careful in case you want to lock the bootloader (which isnt possible with LOS or when being rooted).
Most points have already been answered, I believe - with the “bloat” question remaining.
I have not checked those numbers myself, but I’d not be surprised if they were correct.
Based on those assumptions: LineageOS comes pretty much “bare” while any officially “Google certified” Android phone has to include a serious amount of additional Google apps like GMail, Chrome, Youtube, Google Music, Play Store, etc. I can easily imagine that these apps make up the bulk of the observed size difference between the two systems. Otherwise Fairphone usually prides itself in not having additional bloat beyond that like other manufacturers include.
I did a factory reset and for a moment there were 21 GB of storage used, until Goole Play downloaded some updates and it jumped to 22GB
I am taking notes, in order to be able to share my journey.
Started to sketch out the options. My intent is to eventually curate a blog-style article, when a picture will say more than a thousand words.
On a side note, the transition from older hardware to this one, with a leap of 8 years, is quite exciting!!1
Just ordered some USB-C to HDMI cables, I realized there might be more avenues for me to record and document my experiences beyond the usual adb screencap .
And I think for the first time I visualized for myself what Magisk is doing, on a high level:
An overlay filesystem is like a transparent sheet on an overhead projector: you can add new content or annotations to the sheet without altering the original image being projected.
Did you know?
In Android, the Zygote process acts as the foundational template from which all app processes are forked, optimizing startup times.
In biology, a zygote is the initial cell formed from the union of two reproductive cells, beginning the development of a new organism.
Didn’t know that, seems interesting
You can install any APK, only condition is that it’s for the right architecture (armv7 32bits or armv8 64bits apks are not compatible)
Your sketchs seems really interesting but (at least for me) hardly readable because of the hatched lines
The Vanced YouTube vanished from their official page, because Google went after them.
At some time it is expected that even the “old apk” that people might have laying around will stop working. But YouTube without “sponsorblock” suppression (and adblock) is…
…quite different!
Once the diagrams have content that I am happy with I will eleveate them “out of sketch” mode. (It is graphviz, so the majority of the time one is fighting node placement ) Bear with me for the moment, please.
If you don’t need any YT account features there’s a fork of NewPipe with Sponsorblock built in that works great.
It’s available through Izzy’s repo as well.
Just noticed that the is now YouTube ReVanced (a Magisk module) as well.
But the NewPipe fork is equally great!
(A few months ago I tried SkyTube, but scrolling through the comments was looping the first ~100 comments or so.)
I am perfectly happy to have a “subscription list” for YouTube channels bound to a particular device, no need to bind that to my Google account…
Back on topic: Successfully unlocked the bootloader, rooted with Magisk, all on stock Fairphone OS.
I certainly need to get used to the size and weight (in comparison to my Samsung Galaxy S5) so I figured I can to that while on “stock”.
Without the USB-C to 3.5mm headphone jack I can’t fully migrate to the Fairphone 4 anyways, waiting for a delivery.
Surely that isn’t the ideal state 
