Hi. I have been loving my new FP4, and I don’t know if this is an issue or a design flaw.
I have a lot of MP3 files that I’ve purchased in the past. I would like to listen to them, but don’t want adverts or to pay for software to play them- I have already paid for them once! Is there a built in MP3 player that I have missed?
On a similar note, every smartphone I’ve had previously had capacity to open Word or Excel documents. My FP4 won’t. Part of the reason I chose this phone, beyond the environmental credentials, was the tidiness- no need for bloatware and unnecessary apps. Is there a way to view documents in the same way that pdf files open on the phone?
I had a look but the only advice I could find was around downloading external apps, which is something I was hoping to avoid- particularly if they come with a cost or adverts.
Thank you very much for your help, in advance.
Hi and welcome to the forum
You can try F-Froid to download, gratis and ‘google’ free apps for music and ms office.
There are other options
Hi Amoun- thank you for taking the time to reply!
Does this mean that it is only possible to access my music and office documents through external apps?
Yes.
Since not everybody is using every app and many people prefer other apps than the preinstalled ones, we call such preinstalled apps “bloatware”.
So, you get a clean OS from FP, without many preinstalled and useless apps (which mostly include tracking, if the phone is from another vendor), which you can setup however you want.
For starters I’d suggest this:
For MP3 and video:
For office:
But you can always try other apps, too.
I don’t understand why you let it sound that negative.
That’s IMHO the idea of modern smartphone that you can install apps which are perfectly tailored for your tasks…
You smartphone will still work perfectly fine if you have some apps installed.
This was why F-Droid was proposed - to avoid adverts and tracking by the selected apps.
Still - someone has to invest time (and maybe even money) to develop apps. So apps asking for at least donations give sense for me, too…
As some already mentioned, I use:
- VLC for mp3 and videos
- LibreOffice Viewer for word/excel documents
- MuPDF for PDF documents
Got them from F-Droid, it’s free, open-source and ad-free 
Thank you all for your kind suggestions, I will admit that I was surprised that my phone has apps like YouTube music but no inbuilt MP3 player, and that I can read PDFs but not office documents. I will however continue to advocate for Fairphone since I believe in the ethical and sustainable credentials.
Thanks to your help I will get the functionality I need, and I hope that you all have a lovely day.
Hi Teabot, you mean opening an MP3 file from the app File and then it asks to open in YouTube Music?
If this is the case you are right, the standard File app doesn’t have an integrated MP3 player.
The app “Files” by Google, available on the Play Store, can open MP3 files with an integrated player.
But I don’t know if you use a degoogled OS.
For the office files I think external apps are needed because it’s a proprietary format (docx, xlsx, …).
MP3 is a proprietary format, too.
And if you aren’t already fixated on Google Apps, then it’s always a better choice to use open source apps from F-Droid. Even if it’s only for creating good habits.
I know that from 2017 it’s free and open, accepted by the free software movement.
But I don’t what happened after 2017 to MP3.
Not fixated with Google, but the user wanted to open an MP3 from a file manager and Files comes to mind.
But of course an open source app/player it’s better.
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