Not tech-savvy, thinking of buying Fairphone2 - good choice?

Hi!
I am thinking of buying a Fairphone 2 but I am honestly a bit worried about the fact that it doesn’t come preinstalled with an Appstore (or perhaps any apps at all?)
I’ve only owned one smartphone previously, and it came preinstalled with some apps (a galaxy nexus). How difficult is it for a none-tech-savvy person to use this phone? Do you need to be interested in open source-discussions to be able to get the most out of this phone? How do you even go about installing the apps you like?

Whelp, those are my basic questions, hope someone on here can give some advice:)

The Fairphone 2 comes preinstalled with Google Apps including the App Store.

An interest in the Free Libre and Open Source Movement is always a good thing but not at all necessary to use the FP2. But you can easily install F-Droid alongside Google Play to have access to FLOSS apps.

Unfortunately we don’t know yet if it will be possible to live without Google on the FP2.

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Thank you for the info!:slight_smile: Aha, I apologize, I tried to read up on posts in the forum before posting and it thought that all fairphones would come without Appstore.

In a previous post I read that it is possible to turn of the data synchronization and google apps in order to gain more privacy (Toughts about my new fairphone, “One of the biggest power consumers beside the display is - TADA :Google. Turning of data synchronisation and google location services
will massively extend your battery life and privacy!”). Do we know if this still applies to the Fairphone 2?

Do we know if this still applies to the Fairphone 2?

As far as I know the capability to turn off synchronisation is a function of the Google Apps themselves. Especially location services can be turned off quite easily. That should actually be possible on any Android device.
Correct me if I’m wrong: As a Fairphone comes rooted, you will actually be able to uninstall any app on the phone, even those Google apps like the Play Store, Maps or similar.

Best regards :smile:

Gladly :wink:

FP1(U) cam rooted, FP2 won’t. It will come unlocked and can (easily) be rooted.

Even with root access I’m not sure this is working well. I don’t have GAPPS on my FP1U but I can imagine that removing Google Apps could be equally error-prone as removing system apps (Some can be removed without a problems, removing others will cause random reboots and other problems)

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Thanks for the corrections then :slight_smile:

[quote=“smash, post:1, topic:7887, full:true”]
Hi!
I am thinking of buying a Fairphone 2 but I am honestly a bit worried about the fact that it doesn’t come preinstalled with an Appstore (or perhaps any apps at all?)[/quote]

I would be worried if it would come with preinstalled GAPPS/Appstore. The Fairphone1 comes without any GoogleApps/Appstore and offers to install them automatically by 1 click (but again: only if you want it!).

I personally don’t want to be forced to use a certain appstore and especially not the Google Apps pestilence. So a blank Fairphone2 like Fairphone1 would be the best for all (inlcuding people who really want to use the Google PlayStore - installing it is not a problem, uninstalling it is).

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