Which device for best /e/ experience?

/e/OS Devices
1

Hi all,
Probably i need to buy a new smartphone and it is the perfect occasion to switch to /e/ and join in this fantastic community :slight_smile:
I see that on the site is possible to buy samsung and fairphone smartphone.
My question is: will those devices offer a better /e/ experience? Or is the same as, per example, xiaomi models?
I mean also a 100% support of device hardware

Is /e/ ready for production now?

Thank you :slight_smile:

Regain your privacy! Adopt /e/ the unGoogled mobile OS and online servicesphone

2

Do you know, that the forum has a nice search feature ? Have a look here
https://community.e.foundation/search?q=best%20device

3

The so-called premium devices on /e/Shop website devinitivly offer no better /e/xperience than equivalent hardware from other manufacturers. Models from e.g. Xiaomi and OnePlus already come with unofficial /e/ OS e-0.12-Q- or eOS-Q or Q-GSI or LeOS ‘R’.

1 Like
4

I run /e/OS on FP3 and I’m quite satisfied. Support and overall status is not perfect, but reasonably good (and to be completely fair, my experience with stock phones from big brands like Samsung, LG, etc isn’t perfect either).

On the FP3 support side: after using the phone during a few weeks I only found 1 issue, which is not a major one anyway (easy to work around). Everything else works perfectly.

On the general /e/OS side:

  • My biggest problem is with location services not working as reliably as with gapps one (I opened a topic to ask advice about UnifiedNlp backends, with no feedback so far; I also suggested use of Mozilla Stumbler to help mitigate the problem)
  • You might also run into some apps that don’t work, either because they are rigged to only work on gapps phones (SafetyNet) or usually other compatibility reasons related to microG. You can search your apps in this list and see if they’re affected.
  • Depending on how Google-dependant was your typical usage before, it might take some effort getting used to. /e/ provides a few Cloudy services like email and whatnot. For me, this isn’t a big deal as I already was mostly detached from Google before and didn’t even have a Google account in my phone (I used things like Davx5 to sync calendar and contacts, Syncthing to sync files, K9 with self-hosted provider, etc).
  • I was positively surprised that replacing Google Play wasn’t a problem at all, given there are many high-quality alternatives available (native Apps manager, Aurora, F-Droid…).
  • In my experience, replacing Google Maps is a bit challenging because the alternatives aren’t as much userfriendly. But then again, nothing stops you from installing Google Maps on your /e/ if you really want it.
  • Personally I didn’t like the default launcher, so I installed OpenLauncher which works perfectly for my needs. But well, I dislike the default launcher in many other phones anyway so I really can’t hold this against /e/ :slight_smile:

Well that’s all. On the upside, battery consumption is quite good.

P.S. with its ultra-long life cycle and because of the large overlap of their user target with /e/ user target, I have a feeling that FP3 will become the focal point when it comes to /e/ support (and non-google roms in general), so I would recommend going this route as hardware support is quite good already and will most likely get better in the future.

3 Likes
5

I believe the Fairphone 3 is the best device for /e/ because the relockable bootloader lowers the amount of apps that wrongly think you have rooted the device (but that still doesn’t mean every single app will work).

1 Like
6

For me the FP3 is the baddest choice. It’s to expensive and uses ‘old’ hardware.

7

You pay extra for caring for the environment :upside_down_face:

8

Buying used phone is much better for the environment. fairly mined resources are also consumed resources. For me the FP concept is only ‘green washing’

But sorry, we will run out of topic :frowning:

2 Likes
9

@harvey186 the question was “the best /e/ experience” not “the best price/quality ration” though.

Also, to both. Yes, environment, but not only environment. Primarily you pay “extra” (no, on most phones you pay too little) so that the people who made the phone get a fair wage instead of a suicide net at the factory.

2 Likes
10

For me, this is about buying a phone that can last for the next 10 years. With FP3 many components are replaceable so if something breaks it’s much more likely that it can be repaired without the expense of a full phone.

I’ve already lost track of how many smartphones I owned. They typically break shortly after 2 year period when warranty has expired (planned obsolescence overlords - their timing is excellent!).

In the end I expect it’s going to cost me less money to buy an FP than buying many cheap phones that don’t last.

And this happens to be better for the environment. Well, isn’t economics supposed to work like that? We’re too used to deceiving tactics and scams. In the end, very often less cost == less impact.

1 Like