Going through a process of getting anew phone and installing E, unfortunately it looks like official builds are only available for older phones. I can’t find any of the phones listed for sale.
So I’m considering buying an open box phone on ebay. Best to assume its been used.
If I’m installing E O/S onto a device, does that completely wipe any trace of previous activity on the phone?
Be great if we could have some official builds for new phones, the current list is pretty much obsolete.
Yes.
The vast majority of releases are community, what used to be called dev builds Release types | /e/OS documentation.
Why the special interest in official?
Unofficial builds carry the following warnings.
These builds are made by external contributors.
They are not supported by /e/OS.
They are made from /e/OS source code without additional source modifications.
They may not have a maintainer.
They do not receive OTA updates.
They are not published by Murena and are tagged as UNOFFICIAL.
Release frequency: defined by each external contributor.
Install these builds at your own risk.
Therefore, I’d much rather use official builds.
Yeah that is unofficial but most /e/OS releases are community. It is a confusing naming distinction.
Looking through the community list, Google phones only. Most of those are older also. Can’t find any of them new.
So the only option nowadays, seems to be a used phone or purchase from the Murena website. The latter has a £40 delivery fee, which is a bit steep.
Or risk an unofficial/custom build.
Why have official builds stopped?
It seems that you already applied a Google filter to that selection. Your link reads
https://doc.e.foundation/devices/?q=google&channel=community
Perhaps that was unintentional.
This is the full list
Reminder that, for there to be an /e/OS build for a device, there must first be a LineageOS build for the device.
There are several new phones sold officially with official builds. Even in countries in which no phone are sold directly by Murena, you can still get a Fairphone6+ (it is 1month old …) and install an official /e/OS on it.
Thanks, I was referring to the list in my first post.
I’ve literally gone through the whole list for official builds, the only phone I found for sale new were an overpriced CMF One.
Due to the age of the other phones on the list, you’d have to get them used. Have a look for yourself.
So what I’m saying is there are very little offerings for the official build at present. Its either purchase a Fairphone, look for a used phone, or use a community build.
I can only presume that this is due to costs. So why not keep the current official builds free, and then charge a small fee for new official builds?
Because the current official build list is near redundant.
Apart from Murena, no there isn’t. Presuming you regard ‘new,’ as at least 2025. Device Selector | /e/OS documentation
In fact for 2025, there was nothing apart from Murena.