I recently received my Fairphone 6 with /e/OS pre-installed, but I am facing critical issues that make the phone unusable. I need this resolved as I must remain reachable for work.
The issues:
Broken Seals: The phone arrived with the security seals already broken. Support said it was “normal,” so I installed the official screen protector and case in good faith.
Missing Setup/Migration: During the initial setup, the menu to migrate data from my old phone never appears. It skips this step entirely.
Account Sync Failure: I cannot add my Google account. When I click “Add Account,” the process fails immediately, preventing me from syncing my professional contacts and calendar.
Resets didn’t help: Multiple factory resets have not fixed these software-level defects.
I have already contacted support, but I cannot be without a functional phone for my professional duties. Has anyone else experienced this “missing migration” bug on the latest FP6 /e/OS build?
On the broken seal – Murena /e/OS seal? Fairphone seal?). Practices how to handle broken seals seem to vary between FP6 /e/OS sold directly by Fairphone or by Murena (see FP6 from Murena with broken seals). Fairphone has tasked a third party company (not Murena) to flash /e/OS on their stock; Murena at least used to do it in-house (at Murena) and might still do so.
I appreciate everyone’s input, but the phone’s initial setup menu doesn’t even offer the option to connect to another phone to import data. I’ve watched Fairphone’s setup videos, and nothing like that appears there either.
I’m mainly trying to understand if anyone else in the community has had the same experience, because this — along with the opened seals — makes me question whether I received a device in proper condition for use. Even if someone had to open it to configure it, it should have been properly resealed, as that’s a basic security concern with any product.
I’d really like to know if anyone has been in the same situation and how it was resolved with Fairphone, especially since I was offered the full service. I specifically bought a non-Android phone because my work involves security and confidentiality requirements, meaning I need a device that is as secure and uncompromised as possible.
I was trying to be responsible and improve the quality and security of both my work and my daily life, so I’d appreciate hearing about any similar experiences and how they were handled. And again, thank you all for your input.
It is. I think the reason for the question was simply that it is a rather surprising combination: buying a de-Googled phone and then adding a Google account to it.
I’m not sure you’re fully aware that you’re dealing with two completely separate worlds here:
the standard Fairphone stock Android with Google (as shown in the Fairphone videos), and
/e/OS, which is designed to run without Google.
Switching away from your previous Google-based Android setup and leaving your Google account behind will likely take more time and effort than moving from one Google phone to another. But once you’ve made the transition, everything should run smoothly.
The people in the /e/OS forum will probably be happy to help you through the process.
From what you’re describing, it doesn’t sound like there’s any fault on Fairphone’s side. It seems much more like a matter of getting used to /e/OS.
So I was indeed in the same situation. When I received my FP6 with /e/OS three months ago, I decided not to migrate my old phone. I wanted a clean start without all the accumulated data clutter and unused apps. So I installed everything from scratch, imported my contacts and calendar (you can export both from your Google account), added a few other essentials, and that was it. It took about two or three hours to get the phone into a fully usable state, with a few minor adjustments and bits of tinkering over the following days.
Thank you. This was a very usefull answer, however I bought a phone to use as a whole and it doesn’t make any sense that the phone doesn’t offer the possibility of migrating the data. I truly believe there’s something wrong with this particular phone since it doesn’t even allow me to download apps when I try. People can tell me that I need to do this or that to programme, however, I believe the phone should be readdy to be used as advertised by fairphone. I could consider what you saying but some data I need to migrate and I need to Access my email and work email and it has proven Impossible to install and use any of it so far.
If Fairphone support say this is normal, then it’s normal, even if I would agree it isn’t a good look for a newly bought phone.
As was mentioned before, somebody needs to install the alternative /e/OS if you buy it preinstalled, Fairphones don’t come with /e/OS from the factory.
This has been observed by users before, it’s safe to assume /e/OS doesn’t offer this. /e/OS documentation was pointed at already.
This is most probably not your particular phone, this is most probably “just” the /e/OS App Lounge acting up, which has been quite common for a long time now, sadly.
/e/OS users who like a more predictable and reliable App store are using a combination of F-Droid (for free Open Source Apps) and Aurora Store (for Apps from the Google Play Store). Aurora Store can be installed via F-Droid.
App Lounge is mainly (but not only) combining into one App what those two stores do, App Lounge didn’t invent handling Open Source Apps as well as Apps from the Play Store from scratch.
A professional need to add a Google account to a deliberately degoogled Android variant is not a good fit logically, but might still be manageable if other /e/OS users can help to get it to work.
But do you need certain Google-dependent Apps (which are most Apps in existence) working 100% of the time? Nobody can or will guarantee this on /e/OS.
Do you need some approval of some IT department to be able to use your device in some company environment? Better check this beforehand with the IT department.
It seems you somehow didn’t expect to be in for quite a ride, but you are.
If you want less surprises or tinkering, especially with work-related stuff, you should be better off using Fairphone’s Google certified Android OS.
I agree with previous replies. I guess it would be theoretically possible to have a quick and simple migration process from google-android to googlefree-android, but the systems are different in many ways.
Google-android runs a lot of background services most users aren’t in the slightest aware of, to facilitate their mail, maps, calendar apps etc etc. And there’s been a lot of effort over the years to provide various alternatives, with an android free of Google’s snooping and frankly unethical use of user data. e/os is one of those alternatives.
I bought a FP6 with e/os a few months back, after having used google-android for 10+ years. Like a previous replier, I went through a process of rebuilding my phone from scratch, and only getting what apps I wanted, with individual migrations of each app, i.e. exporting my notes, calendar and messages etc from my old phone and importing it to my new phone. Time well spent as far as I’m concerned.
However, if you’re dependent on google services such as a gmail work account, if you really need to use google calendar for any reason, or some other app, you have a few options.
Insular - this is a free app you can download from F-droid or App Lounge (in the open source tab), and it lets you keep certain apps mostly separated from the rest of your phone’s data. This is specifically built through a function in android, “Work profile", that serves to separate any apps you need professionally from your private data. I haven’t used any google apps through it on my phone so I can’t guarantee it works, but I’ve used whatsapp through it which works fine. Reasonably, if you download e.g. gmail through it, and log into your account, all your google data should be available without having to migrate anything. You can read more about it here: Insular | F-Droid - Free and Open Source Android App Repository
Flashing to FPOS - this is a bit more complicated, but it’s possible to change your operating system to FPOS (Fairphone OS), which is one of many versions of google-android. With it you can use google apps as with any Samsung, Sony or other google-android phone. Migrating would also very likely be easier. I haven’t flashed an OS for many years, so I can’t tell you much about it or the pros and cons, but it’s a fairly technologically advanced thing to do, at least in comparison to installing Insular. There are loads of guides around however.
Double phones - if you really strongly desire to keep your data as secure as possible, you could keep your FP6 with e/os for private use, and get any google-android phone for work or other purposes. It has its obvious drawbacks however.
If none of the above feels like a good way to solve your problem, and no one else in the forum has a better solution, you might be able to get a refund in case you had some kind of satisfaction guarantee when you bought it, if it’s still valid, or just sell your phone and get a Samsung or something like that.
Because it is better than a Gogole phone 