I’ve been using a privacy‑focused Volla Phone for the past few years, but recently decided to switch to the Fairphone 6 with /e/OS.
Only after placing the order did I come across the many negative posts in the Fairphone forum (not the best timing), and now I’m having second thoughts.
From your experience: apart from the quirks of a degoogled system, does /e/OS generally run smoothly, or does it require a lot of effort just to get the basic functions working?
Should I perhaps even cancel the order and stick with Volla OS, which has always worked reliably for me? (I don’t want my phone to become a hobby project, and I’m not keen on tinkering.)
Hi there. I have an Fairphone 3+ bought it 5 years ago. It came with android 9 stock. I like testing new custom roms and systems. So I installed ubuntu touch, iode os and e/os. E/os is the system i am running now (3.3 android 15). It is easy to manage and for me every app i need is working without problems including italian public id apps and banking. They have a good launcher app, but i prefer kiss launcher which is minimal and fast.
Every month there is an update which is easy to install.
In all the time i have been using e/os (which is about 4 of the 5 years I have the phone) i did not have crashes or propblems. So for me e/os is optimal for your daily driver phone.
I run /e/OS on a OnePlus 6, and my general experience has been positive. The apps that I need work as expected. So I would say that you easily get everything working.
I could even easily root my phone - this is however a scenario you are probably not interested in.
Still, some personal negative experiences I have made, and general advice:
One update had a bug so that the battery consumption was very high. I had to revert to the previous version, which resulted in a factory reset - which was ok, because…
It is generally advised to make a backup before an update. In 99.9% of cases, /e/OS updates go smoothly, and a nasty bug as described above is not introduced. However, there is still a risk. And do not forget the rule of thumb: Data without backup are by definition not important.
There are several methods to make backups on /e/OS. A quick forum search reveals some possibilites. They may not always be “set up and forget”, but better than nothing.
Complete Android backups are unfortunately not as easy as for iOS devices.
An update may introduce a bug that has not been spotted in the beta stage (even with public testing). You may check the forum or e / Backlog · GitLab for examples. There are usually workarounds, but they may nevertheless be annoying.
The developer staff of the e foundation is rather small and supports a lot of devices, so this is not completely unexpected.
That said and as mentioned, my experience has been positive, and I have not switched to another ROM.
If you rely on certain security sensitive apps like for banking etc., be aware that every custom ROM is prone to be considered as “not supported” by these apps and may refuse to launch after an app update. A fix may be introduced by the /e/OS team (or even the app developers themselves!) in the next version, but have a backup if you depend on certain app functionality.
The /e/OS degoogling is on a “best effort” basis to find a compromise between usability and privacy. For push messaging, the microG services (an open-source replacement of the Google Play Services) has to connect to the Google servers, see Anonymous calls to Google servers. You may however deactivate most of these functions that rely on the Google infrastructure.
For Fairphone 6 (and some other devices), there is a community and an official version of /e/OS, see Different Build Types
Official: /e/OS upgrades (e.g. from Android 14 to Android 15) are offered “over the air”, i.e., in the updater app. However, they may arrive several months later.
Community: /e/OS upgrades have to be done manually (but “dirty upgrades” without data loss are possible, although not officially recommended. They have worked on my phone, however.)
Not related to /e/OS itself, but to the /e/OS cloud (called Murena): There was an outage a year ago or so that lasted several months. It is fixed now. While I am not aware of a detailed post-mortem analysis yet, the cloud has worked reliable since then.
You do not have to subscribe or even log in to the Murena cloud to use /e/OS, and may opt for your own NextCloud instance (or no cloud at all) instead.
Rule of thumb: If your cloud provider loses data, it is their fault. If you lose data because of your cloud provider, it is your fault. (Do not rely on one cloud backup as your only backup, but follow e.g. the 3-2-1 strategy.)
Are these posts about /e/OS in general, or about the Fairphone 6 together with /e/OS? There are several /e/OS with users in this forum, maybe they can answer specific questions you have.
Thank you, @jhansen63, @Tentos, for these quick and comprehensive replies. They’re very helpful and have alleviated my worries a little.
I can not always make out whether the issues people complain about (phone not booting, phone not charging, unwanted constant reboots, no Wi-Fi etc.) are hard- or software-related and if they have the /e/OS or the Android version of the Fairphone.
My vague, unsubstantiated impression is that /e/ causes less problems on the Fairphone than Android.
I use /e/OS since 5 years and in my opinion the experience varies alot but from general feedback on this Forum it works good for a lot (I guess users here who will give you feedback are regularly here and have praise for it).
An usually issue are banking apps or government apps which can be most impactful if they don’t work. For this I would suggest you that you let us know what you need and others can give feedback about it. For me there is no guarantee thoose apps work everyday, it can break with app update or system update since /e/OS team and microg a playing catch up with compatibilty. I look always to be able to use them without the smartphone.
Regarding issues with Fairphone, Fairphone 5 had a bug for a long time where it would reboot suddenly which is fixed as far as I know. Fairphone 6 (fairly new to /e/OS) was struggling with a new feature which resulted in reboots (it didn’t for me, but I might use different settings, I will make an example later). I can’t tell the state of that but haven’t read about it anymore.
Last point I wanna mention is personal preference of settings, as an example there is Advanced Privacy feature which will block tracking or mask your IP (like an identification on the web) or spoof your GPS position. Depending on which you have active, the app store might not work as expected. How should it show you apps from you country when you use a fake location in different country??
If you have any more general questions about something let us know. Sometimes better than ‘You happy with it? Yes I am’ without context why.
I’m generally okay with such things: banking apps tend to be problematic, so I don’t expect them to work—though it would be nice if they did.
My concern, after reading threads in the Fairphone forum, was that basic functions don’t always operate correctly (like volume control, Wi-Fi, sending messages, receiving calls etc).
I worried that I’d need to constantly research and tinker to keep everything running smoothly. (I dealt with that for two years using Mobian, and honestly, I don’t miss it.)
i recommend the Fairphone 3+ that is second hands (100€-200€) that have been already manufactured hightly better than the Fairphone 6 (500€-600€) that is new… so manufactured especially for you…
I had considered getting a new display for my Volla 22 (its specs are close to the 3+), but in the end I decided against spending €150 to keep a piece of dated technology that I might not be able to use much longer. After enduring the increasingly sluggish performance of the 22, I’m ready for some swooshdicity.
So far, it really seems to have been the right decision — I like the phone a lot. Setting it up was straightforward, and everything appears to be running smoothly.
From what I can tell so far, /e/OS is a really nice system and at least as easy to use as Volla OS (and Android).
Good to read. I dare say many of the negative comments you mentioned earlier might have been due to /e/ rushing to provide a build for fp6 more or less at launch combined with buyers being somewhat uncertain or over confident with the concept that /e/ might work “just like a Google phone”.
