I realize some of this is probably already answered within questions about Fairphone 1 and will be answered later by demonstration videos, but I’m curious nonetheless. I’m currently working with an iPhone 5, running (of course) iOS 9. I’m aware that the Fairphone OS running on the Fairphone 2 will be based on Android Lollipop. (And maybe possibly updated to Android Marshmallow someday.)
My question, as one of the Unwashed who’s never held an Android device before - what will the differences be between Fairphone OS 2 and typical Android Lollipop? I’ve looked into demos of the Android system so I know what I’ll be dealing with, but the screenshots of the OS on websitse like The Verge seem a little different on a cosmetic level.
Yeah, but that’s about it. Fairphone OS has and will have a custom launcher, but you can install any launcher you want to anyway. Even ones that give you the look and feel of iOS.
Other than that the Fairphone also comes with a few custom apps.
Of course I have not held a Fairphone 2 in my hands yet so I’m not 100% certain that the Fairphone 2 won’t have any other substantial differences to standard android, but the infos we got so far didn’t indicate anything of that kind.
as @paulakreuzer said you can change the look of your android by using differend launchers but also with the default lancer you can get very different looks, by using Widgets, or different
Icon packs etc.
You will find some examples (screenshots) for both cases in this thread.
Thanks to both of you! Reading your links, I wonder if it might be possible to install the Jolla launcher that the company of the same name released mostly for nexus phones and see if the best of both worlds can be achieved - ethical handset and multitask-friendly UI. Though there might be bugs or hardware issues, so who knows…
I can only find an “Angry birds” Stella launcher by Jolla. Is that what you mean? That one will very likely work with FP2 (Google Play says it also works with FP1). However Jolla says, it is “optimized for Android 4.3 or 4.4”. So maybe it does not work that great with either FP1 or FP2.
Yers…did some extra research of my own. The original Jolla launcher can still be downloaded but it’s mostly optimised for 4.2 and 4.3 again…and the Stella one is apprently heavily Angry-Birds-themed and not very customisable, which are both gigantic negatives for me.
I think I’ll give Nova and Z Launcher a try when I get my phone. KISS Launcher looks fun too.