Happy FairPhone 4 user here. Running 3+ years, only replaced the battery once. Aim to keep it 7-10 years, barring unforeseen events like theft. Not going to replace it just because a newer model is released.
That's a lot, I usually use old phones from family members, most of them have 4 years of use by the time I get them and I get a whole day of usage from the battery.
Honestly, not sure. I use Firefox Mobile pretty heavily during the day and I suspect it's part of the drain. I'm not too concerned by it and I just try to replace the battery every ~1-1.5 years.
Many important security updates will end much earlier. The table is based on how long Fairphone will provide incomplete security updates, not how long the device will truly receive security support.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have end-of-life Linux kernel branches without security support. Fairphone's more recent devices are headed to the same situation. In practice, the same thing happens with other components beyond the Linux kernel.
GrapheneOS is like a veteran and war zone expert: for them, not only the external environment is considered extremely hostile that you should leave your house only wearing an armor and with bodyguards, but also the internal environment is hostile: your bodyguards could be bribed and work against you, that's why you need to somehow be protected against that as well.
Just as physical security, digital security most of the time not as radical, and tradeoffs are usually accepted, especially when they are "invisible": hardware and software security features are usually not mentioned in the specs and the regular and even power user just don't know most of them and what do they do.
When GrapheneOS says "private" and "secure", they mean top-of-the-line security features, updates as soon as possible, all available mitigations against zero-days and insecure code which will limit the impact before the patch, etc. Security as in a killdozer.
When other say "private" and "secure", most of the time it means: "we've followed all the recommendations applicable to our development budget, device price point, and support life time". Graphene does not like that definition of these words.
For smartphone, chip manufacturer goal is not to protect the user at all costs, but to provide reasonable security features for the price.
BUT the goal of chip manufacturer to protect the device at all costs is for… game consoles! That's why Xbox, PlayStation, Switch all run on a custom silicon and not an ordinary chips!
> That's why Xbox, PlayStation, Switch all run on a custom silicon and not an ordinary chips!
Not really. Xbox and PlayStation both run on pretty standard AMD Zen 2 chips. Somewhat customized, but standard enough that people by binned playstation 5 motherboards to use as computers with normal OS'es (lookup BC-250). The last gen with more customized chips was the PS3/Xbox360 era, when both went with a variant of PowerPC, same as Gamecube/Wii/WiiU.
Switch runs on basically the same Nvidia Tegra CPU/GPU as multiple android tablets.
I think you should listen to bringup of Linux on Playstation talk from CCC to understand that those platforms are much more than just "somewhat customized".
There are whole sections of peripheral chips missing and they behave quite a bit differently with how they bootstrap and where things are mapped in memory.
The steam decks APU was designed for Magic Leap 2. It is one of the worst examples you could choose for a chip specifically designed for the thing it is in.
>but standard enough that people by binned playstation 5 motherboards to use as computers
That doesn't mean that all the features are enabled right from the factory, or that the compatibility with already existing features is lost.
Modern chip's security features are pretty complicated and include hardware patches, hardware debug authentication, multiple provisioning states (and multi-key hierarchy for that), RMA states to clear all the private information, etc.
>Switch runs on basically the same Nvidia Tegra CPU/GPU as multiple android tablets.
Yes, and the one which got cracked with a bootrom vulnerability ;)
That's a pretty working motivation for a chip company to improve their chip security when the company as beefy as Nintendo tells them that their chip is vulnerable they're losing money because the customers can play for free ;). I'm pretty sure patchable bootroms started to be common only after Switch hack.
It is a foundational reality that software (especially in unsafe languages) will invariably have vulnerabilities. Defense in depth and least privilege have compounding effects by forcing attackers to chain multiple exploits to achieve a compromised device, rather than a single vulnerability.
GrapheneOS shows how much can be accomplished on top of relatively secure platforms to begin with (AOSP, Pixel Stock OS, etc.) without sacrificing nearly any usability to the end user (barring manufactured hurdles like Play Integrity). It makes it more damning that many "privacy" OSes and devices cannot even meet the baseline level of privacy and security that AOSP provides, but degrade it.
Firmware and driver neglect and the lack of secure element utilization is not "reasonble security for the price".
>GrapheneOS is like a veteran and war zone expert: for them, not only the external environment is considered extremely hostile that you should leave your house only wearing an armor and with bodyguards, but also the internal environment is hostile: your bodyguards could be bribed and work against you, that's why you need to somehow be protected against that as well.
Yeah, iPhoens are made that way as well. It's just caring about the privacy of your users.
> When GrapheneOS says "private" and "secure", they mean top-of-the-line security features, updates as soon as possible, all available mitigations against zero-days and insecure code which will limit the impact before the patch, etc. Security as in a killdozer.
I think it's deceptive because people think they will get better privacy/security with a /e/ fairphone when it's actually much worse than an iPhone.
/e/ does have services collecting data on their users which isn't disclosed including user tracking via unique identifiers in the update client. They also spent years sending user speech data to OpenAI without informing users beyond fine print in the terms of use. It's presented as not using Google services but has a whole bunch of Google services with privileged access enabled by default. It even downloads and runs Google Play executables such as droidguard by default with privileged access far beyond the regular app sandbox.
It's amazing how people still fall for the marketing. Apple is an ad company, just like Google. Advertising and data collection is baked into their OS, store, and core apps. They're just trailing behind revenue-wise by a few years.
Privacy and security from what is the question. From big tech or from criminals and governments that take your device and plug it into cellebrite machines?
I for one prefer to be protected from big tech. Sure GrapheneOS does both, but Apple does not.
iPhone is top-of-the-line as well, because they control the whole software and the whole hardware (starting from basically all the chips). That's very rare in the industry.
There are just a bunch of companies which afford to do the same. Maybe Xiaomi will be the next one.
Fairphone makes their fair share of blunders. Software updates are a big issue, especially around the times that critical vulnerabilities need to be patched.
With the hardware I'm not impressed, and on their own forum I've seen plenty of people reporting issues with overheating on the Gen 6. Hopefully kinks have been ironed out on their 6+.
The current CEO also has a persona that would stir up any community (read a few of his AI-gened posts on their blog, if interested of context).
Still holding on to my FP4, but they are not of consideration on my future phone purchase, unless there is some kind of reality check over there and improvements materialize beyond words.
Ultimately, a lot of the “fairness”
of the Fairphone is offered by “just buy a really popular manufacturer.”
Everyone and their dog can repair an iPhone because it’s the most popular phone on the planet. Are those repairs accessible to the consumer at home with amateur skills? No, not really. However, newer iPhone models are significantly easier to repair and come along with lower repair costs direct from the manufacturer compared to previous models.
You want years of software updates? Yeah, an iPhone has you covered there, too.
And of course, fairphone’s hardware and OS are nothing to write home about. For the freedom and security nerds they’re better off with GrapheneOS on Pixel or whatever upcoming Motorola phones will support it.
Who is the Fairphone for exactly? Who is buying it and why?
I think the fairbuds are their best product, but I also imagine AirPods Pro 3 are on a whole different level of sound quality, noise cancelation, voice quality/voice isolation, and firmware/software polish.
And let’s be honest about repairability with tiny earbuds: being able to replace the battery is has such a tiny impact on their footprint. If I have to throw out my
AirPods Pro 3 every 5 years due to battery degradation, that’s such an insignificant quantity of material being wasted, so it’s probably worth it to get a better product. I could offset my environmental impact by eating a little less beef or riding my bike instead of driving a few times. You drive 30 miles and that’s an entire gallon of refined petroleum product, how much material and energy is used to make one pair of AirPods? I can’t imagine it’s a lot.
I don’t say any of this to be a big corporate or Apple shill. I am rooting for the little guys. But the little guys need to be realistic. You look at products like the Framework 13 Pro and you can actually say, okay, here’s a product with really legitimate benefits over its incumbent competition. There is a reason to buy this product for a certain buyer. I just don’t see that with Fairphone. I can’t think of a customer profile where that person is getting a better ownership experience with Fairphone products.
I'm not big on this general line on argument, but one point in particular:
> And of course, fairphone’s hardware and OS are nothing to write home about. For the freedom and security nerds they’re better off with GrapheneOS on Pixel or whatever upcoming Motorola phones will support it.
For the "freedom nerds", FP is one of the only (if not the only?) vendor to have official support for microG-based operating systems, seamless OTA updates and everything included. The Murena e/OS offering in particular is simple enough that the non-nerds that (perhaps less outspokenly) care about freedom can just pick it up with little change in habits.
I guess that’s true, although we could possibly split that camp into two sides: the folks who believe that Play Store sandboxing is going to be more functional, and the folks who prefer microG are willing to accept the issues that come along with it.
To be fair on either side of that debate, getting a phone that comes with /e/OS installed from the factory is going to be easier than flashing GrapheneOS on a Pixel or LineageOS with microG on another device.
Devices are sold with GrapheneOS installed. Installing it with the web installer is very easy and safe so that's the recommendation for nearly everyone.
> For the "freedom nerds", FP is one of the only (if not the only?) vendor to have official support for microG-based operating systems, seamless OTA updates and everything included.
I am not sure what you are trying to say here. I have never had an Android system that did not have OTA updates. Everything included... I usually like to install the apps I want?
As for microG, I think it's debatable. Is it better to have microG contacting the Google servers or sandboxed Play Services going through a Graphene-powered proxy? And say you have microG going through a Murena proxy (do they do that?), is that significantly better than sandboxed Play Services? At the end of the day, your system is made mostly of code written by Google (AOSP).
> The Murena e/OS offering in particular is simple enough that the non-nerds
Yes, I think it's what makes Murena successful. It's surprisingly simple to install GrapheneOS on a Pixel (you follow a wizard on a Chromium browser and click "next" a bunch of times), but many people are scare just by the idea.
> I am not sure what you are trying to say here. I have never had an Android system that did not have OTA updates. Everything included... I usually like to install the apps I want?
The last bit of my sentence could easily be misread as an enumeration of three things ("microG", "OTA updates", "everything included"), but it was actually an elaboration: FP is the only vendor to support microG, and (in contrast to "unofficial" microG setups) it doesn't require sacrifices in convenience because standard features like OTA updates work just like with your average Android. Perhaps that's clearer?
(Notably "Everything included" does not mean it ships a thousand apps or something. To the contrary, FP stock OS is mostly vanilla Android)
Point being: I could install LineageOS on my last phone, but it was a poorly documented process, updates were a hassle (having to flash through custom recovery for lack of OTA), and I had virtually no confidence in data integrity when running major updates.
> Is it better to have microG contacting the Google servers or sandboxed Play Services going through a Graphene-powered proxy?
How about microG not contacting Google servers at all?
In any case you're presenting an unnecessarily binary argument though. Letting Google handle push notifications is different from using them as your location provider, and both are different from letting all Play Services lose on your system.
> How about microG not contacting Google servers at all?
I already addressed that in my comment, right after the line you quoted.
> Letting Google handle push notifications is different from using them as your location provider, and both are different from letting all Play Services lose on your system.
And what would you say GrapheneOS does of those? Do you know, or do you just assume that GrapheneOS does the worse there?
> I already addressed that in my comment, right after the line you quoted.
Where? You suggested it would go through Murena instead, but you can fully disable third party services by disabling external push providers and by using on-device databases for GPS. e/OS directly offers this configuration during initial setup.
> And what would you say GrapheneOS does of those? Do you know, or do you just assume that GrapheneOS does the worse there?
I'm not necessarily trying to present either as "better" or "worse" since they both have their merits depending what exactly you're after (which I don't feel this is the right time/place to have a detailed rundown of). It was the root comment that posited e/OS was strictly inferior for people who care about freedom.
isn't the main point of Fairphone to not use conflict minerals?
by using FOSS only myself and hating monopolies like Apple etc., i still pretty much convinced that being "green" or "ethical" is more about participating/volunteering/doing-something towards a better world than off-loading your duty to other companies... one could easily make a point that Apple products despite locked down, are still green (Apple has a bunch of zero-emission and whatever policies) and much more if one uses their devices for a long while. i had a 2° hand iPhone SE 1° gen. till 2021? if stuff breaks despite your not being able to fix it's not like you can't hop into a specialized shop to change batteries or even pay the expensive service Apple offers... sure that allows exploitation and it's always nice to get rid of it, that's why somehow these emerging companies are important and/or policies like the right of repair will make them obsolete
I have been wondering and I first got a Fairphone 3+ because I thought, among others, it was "greener".
Then I realised that:
- Fairphone 3 was already "slow" when it was released in 2019
- Fairphone 3+ was pretty much exactly the same hardware, but I bought it 2.5 years later
- My Fairphone 3+ was annoyingly slow from the moment I bought it (I was using it less than a normal phone because of that, and I just completely gave up on using the camera and asked other people to take photos instead).
- My Fairphone 3+ became painfully after 1.5 - 2 years.
I did not change phone because the hardware was not running anymore. I changed because I just couldn't use the few apps I needed because they were unusable (lagging and crashing). I don't mean games: banking apps, weather forecasts, public transports. Pretty much only Signal/WhatsApp were fine (slow, but fine).
So I painfully kept my Fairphone 3+ for a little more than 4 years.
Then I realised that people who buy an iPhone routinely keep it 6-8 years, without it being painful at all. Is it "greener" if I buy one iPhone/Pixel, or 2 Fairphones? I'm not so sure anymore. What I know is that the iPhone/Pixel are not painful to use.
I think your story also points to the idea that business ethics or other tertiary benefits will only sell a product to a limited extent. They help, but the product being fit for its core purpose is still most important.
> For the freedom and security nerds they’re better off with GrapheneOS on Pixel or whatever upcoming Motorola phones will support it.
Not quite. The people who care about security first are better off with GOS, yes. However, GOS's threat model very specifically treats the user as a thing to defend against; the freedom-first crowd should avoid them.
> However, GOS's threat model very specifically treats the user as a thing to defend against
Can you elaborate?
GOS mostly honours the Android security model, which many alternatives don't do (many times they don't have a choice because the device doesn't allow them to relock the bootloader, so they just defeat the whole security model from the moment you install).
There is absolutely nothing that can be done on a Stock Android and that I cannot do on GrapheneOS. Or at least I haven't found it.
Yes, GOS is probably a direct improvement over stock android; I would also describe that as suboptimal from a user freedom perspective. Really, most of my beef with GOS is that its developers strongly object to user-controlled root. On my phone, I can run a backup app, give it root access, and backup/restore any app at will. Or, I can run a file manager with root access and inspect any data in the system. The GOS devs object to this on the grounds that any user-installed app getting root undermines their entire security model (and some other arguments that I'm going to skip because I'm trying to steel-man). And that's actually a perfectly valid argument; handing root access to apps does break their security model, but if the user doesn't have root then I'd contest the idea that the user is in control. And of course there is the fact that I have actual uses for root that GOS doesn't provide. (There are some other variants of this basic tension, like bootloader locking, but I think root is the biggest instance and representative.)
That doesn't come across as steelmanning our position at all but rather the opposite. It omits the most important points.
Providing app accessible root in the OS greatly reduces security without people ever using it. It gives root access to a huge portion of the OS by having it around as a feature even if it's never used. It fundamentally breaks a large portion of the security model for verified boot, which can no longer defend against attackers maintaining privileged access after a compromise
In addition to the inherent reduction in security from providing it, nearly all apps built around using full unconstrained root access don't need anywhere close to that. In nearly all cases, it's used as a shortcut instead of doing things securely. Following the principle of least privilege by only granting the required privileges is a core part of security. For example, an app for managing low-level firewall rules only needs an API for doing so in netd and netd only needs CAP_NET_ADMIN rather than full root. Doing this by giving full root access to a graphical application which is not properly integrated into the standard firewall management is not a secure approach. Giving full root access to a large portion of the rest of the OS in a way that can be hijacked in many attack vectors to make it possible to dynamically grant it makes it a lot worse.
GrapheneOS does have user-accessible root access in userdebug builds. Those aren't the main production builds of the OS but people who believe they know better and want to have it can build, sign and use those instead. Building the OS also gives an opportunity to include safe implementations of features instead of insecure hacks.
Every app can be backed up as part of the baseline. Apps can exclude specific data but are nearly all doing so because that data is a cache or can't be used elsewhere. For example, Signal encrypts their database with the hardware keystore and bypassing them excluding it from backups to back up all the files for it will not result in the data being possible to restore elsewhere.
How about having full access to /data? Or full system backups GrapheneOS still lacks? One might object granting root access to apps, but the device owner should at least have full FS access via adb.
That's available in userdebug builds of GrapheneOS via ADB. A userdebug build can be done with ro.adb.secure=1 to keep the ADB authentication model intact which is disabled in userdebug builds by default for early boot debugging.
> And that's actually a perfectly valid argument; handing root access to apps does break their security model, but if the user doesn't have root then I'd contest the idea that the user is in control.
First, "protecting against an app running with user permissions" does not mean "considering that the human owning the device is malevolent", right?
The idea is that if the human installs a malware, we don't want that malware to own the system. I think it is completely fair, and for most people it is the better deal.
Second, your complaint about GOS is that you want root access, and they don't provide it. You want a feature they don't provide, sure, but that happens. And that's probably a good reason to use an alternative system. But turning "I want feature X" into "if you don't provide the feature I want, then you are not free software" is manipulative IMO. GrapheneOS is as open source as it gets, you can fork it and install it on your Pixel. It is free software. Maybe not the software you want (that's okay, different people have different preferences), but free software nonetheless.
Since we're steelmanning, I would like to add a bit more.
GrapheneOS will never be closed source/proprietary because they believe code freedom (and user freedom by extension) is paramount. They have repeatedly said they don't have the resources to build a ChromeOS-esque firmware authentication and warning flow for ephemeral user-accessible root and support those builds alongside the existing production environment. They have NOT said it is something they have no interest in even discussing. They have also repeatedly said that where the utility is clearly demonstrated and can be architected in a maintainable way, they are open to contributions (and continued maintenance) that properly enable functions that people unnecessarily need to abuse root privileges for.
The main goal of their project is a system that can protect your personal thoughts, associations and memories to the best of its ability (against thieves, attackers, surveillance etc.) while preserving your interaction with the world. Current OSes (including GrapheneOS and iOS) are already far behind where they should be given the wealth of privacy enhancing technology, computer hardware security, systems engineering and OS design knowledge that has existed for decades- so their work is cut out for them and they are putting everything they have into leading the industry. Their hands are already full. For clear use cases the path of least resistance would be to contribute and commit to maintaining features everyone would benefit from.
If it is a feature/function someone understands they would benefit from personally but do not see the value to impose on others, we can circle back to the original fact which is that GrapheneOS is open source and can be bent/built to your will.
Well said. I would say in general there isn't "the best" OS for everyone and never will be, because each OS makes different trade-offs. I for one want primarily what is understood to be "general purpose computer". Other people rightly don't care about that and want a maximum security device, one that even protects users from their own mistakes (of course putting more trust in the makers of the OS). What we should care about is that people have a choice and can get whatever they prefer.
To answer GPs point, I think Fairphone doesn't primarily target either of the two audiences. I think they primarily target the people that care about the ethics of the creation of the hardware. Basically people who would like to minimize the invisible human cost that their phone creates.
The new Sennheiser earbuds have replaceable batteries too so the fairbuds are no longer unique in that regard. I haven't read comparisons on sound quality though
And of course, wired headphones still exist as an alternative for those who really don’t like the battery aspect, and it’s not even terribly inconvenient for phones without a headphone jack.
I suspect that the venn diagram of the kind of person who takes issue with Bluetooth audio batteries and the kind of person willing to use wired headphones or prefers them outright has a lot of overlap.
Fair enough, but note that it does not concern GrapheneOS. Hopefully soon available on Motorola phones :-). That would be my next phone (assuming it's not too expensive of course).
The GOS people really spend a lot of time of energy showing the worst sides of FairPhone to the world. I think it is because the conscientious technology user is really interested in the combination of ethically sourced, repairable hardware and a security and privacy (from big tech) focussed OS. Tbh I also like that sliders to switch to a simple mode. A well, we can’t have it all. I do prefer de-googled + freedom to do what I want over security (to a degree). So… I’m on the fence. As many vocal people are. A second hand pixel 10 is also a “green” choice.
I do have the feeling that many non-nerds can express the difference between all mentioned attributes, many just like FairPhone as an ethical phone. It’s not that simple, I agree.
So I have been on /e/OS on a Fairphone 3+ for 4.5 years. I was really into /e/OS when I got my Fairphone. When it stopped being usable (not because the hardware was not working anymore, just that the apps I want on my phone were lagging so much they were unusable), I looked into alternatives, including GrapheneOS.
And at that point I got quite disappointed by /e/OS, because I felt like their marketing had been abusing me for years. For instance, my Fairphone 3+ was 4 years behind the Fairphone Stock Android on some updates. /e/OS just wasn't forwarding them, they seemingly were just not maintaining the FP3. Though I bought it to /e/OS, under the promise that it would be supported!
Then I realised that all this time, not only my bootloader was unlocked (so the Android security model had been broken from the first day I powered the phone), but the system was signed with the Google test keys! When you are encouraged to install apps "from the internet" instead of the Play Store, on a phone that disabled the security model so that you're not protected against malware as on any Stock Android, would you say it's being a security nerd?
The thing that GrapheneOS keeps repeating and I realised is true is that many times, if you run a deGoogled alternative that is not GrapheneOS, you get worse security than if you were running Stock Android. It's not about "getting the best possible security", it's about getting the baseline. The truth with /e/OS (or LineageOS, which is pretty much what /e/OS ships, I believe?) is that it depends a lot on the phone. And with many phones, you get worse than the baseline you would get with Stock Android.
> I do prefer de-googled + freedom to do what I want over security (to a degree).
So I switched to GrapheneOS on a Pixel, and I feel like I get the best of both worlds: I get the privacy benefits of the sandboxed Play Services, and the better security. And it's not a "weird" system at all: I asked my family to use it and they didn't realise it was not a "normal Android". It is very different from running something like a Linux on mobile, which would be very very different.
> many just like FairPhone as an ethical phone
Yes, why not. If I was to get a Fairphone again, though, I would use the Stock Android.
And I wish Fairphone could get to the level where they can be supported by GrapheneOS. But it feels like my next phone will probably be a Motorola with GrapheneOS rather than a Fairphone.
GrapheneOS provides massive privacy and security benefits to regular people. That was always important to regular people due to regular devices being nowhere close to good enough to protect people well enough against common threads to their privacy. However, it's far clearer now that exploits have been made so widely available without having expertise. There are many publicly available Android local root exploits on GitHub usable on these devices.
I think it heavily depends. If you are concerned cops or CBP are going to try to take your phone and search it then wanting a phone like GOS is a very reasonable precaution.
Even if you haven't done anything "wrong", you may have engaged in speech or activities that the current US admin has deemed problematic and will try to punish you for if they can find any evidence.
I think this has historically been true and is still approximately true now. But I think in the relatively near future (less than 5 years) there's a really good chance it won't be true anymore.
Once open models catch up to the current frontier in vulnerability exploitation, the cost to target people will go way down. In the past, the cost to hack a random individual person was generally high enough that if there wasn't some special reason to hack you in particular, it wasn't worth it. That may no longer be the case in the near future. The floor of what is acceptable security for the General Public probably needs to rise quite a bit over the next few years.
Why would you assume Google, Apple, and defense-oriented agencies like CISA wouldn't also have access to those same models, but using them to fix issues?
Its just raising the bar across the board, I don't see how only attackers would benefit.
The quote wasn't talking about personal security from governments and corporations. You're warping the meaning into a situation where it doesn't fit at all.
Fairphones are closed source hardware with closed source firmware and closed source userspace drivers. Fairphones are less open than Pixels, not more open.
It isn't truly known how a Fairphone compares to an iPhone or Pixel when it comes to environmental impact or fairness to workers. Fairphones are designed and built by T2Mobile since the Fairphone 4. T2Mobile barely has any public information available about it. There isn't information on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of of it. The same applies to the rest of the supply chain. Fairphone provides a list of companies involved in the supply chain without details.
Fairphones are closed source hardware with closed source firmware and closed source userspace drivers. Fairphones are less open than Pixels, not more open.
It isn't truly known how a Fairphone compares to an iPhone or Pixel when it comes to environmental impact or fairness to workers. Fairphones are designed and built by T2Mobile since the Fairphone 4. T2Mobile barely has any public information available about it. There isn't information on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of of it. The same applies to the rest of the supply chain. Fairphone provides a list of companies involved in the supply chain without details.
iPhones and Pixels have similar replacement parts available and much longer term support. It's harder to replace components but the phones last longer due to better hardware and updates.
I really would like to mention that many times, using /e/OS or LineageOS (or the likes) means that you get worse security than Stock Android.
It would be fine to run /e/OS or LineageOS on a Pixel, assuming those Android systems are not too slow with updates (my experience with my /e/OS phone was that they were 4 years behind as compared to Stock Android).
But really, if you have a Pixel, it doesn't really make sense to use something other than GrapheneOS IMO.
> It would be fine to run /e/OS or LineageOS on a Pixel
Both /e/ and LineageOS lag far behind on current security updates on a Pixel. Neither is based on Android 17 yet which was released in June 2026. Neither has the June 2026 or later Pixel firmware, kernel, driver and HAL patches. Both also roll back the standard security of AOSP but /e/ does so much more than LineageOS.
As you can see at pixel 9 pro's (https://download.lineageos.org/devices/caiman/changes)[los changes], it was updated around Aug 18th (or at least that's when the string bump happened), so although ~2 weeks late (assuming the security patch was released at August 1st, which I'm not sure if it really works this way), it's not as bad as you said.
But yeah GOS is probably the better choice for pixels, depending on the user's prefs of course.
Btw I noticed similar pattern for other devices that support los, like xiaomi ones.
Your response doesn't address what we said. You linked to a page showing LineageOS had a release in August 2026 which does not show it has shipped all the recent standard Android and Pixel security patches, which it hasn't done.
The latest releases of LineageOS for Pixels do not provide the June 2026 and later updates to the firmware, kernel, drivers and HALs because those have only been provided for Android 17 since it was released and LineageOS isn't yet based on Android 17. Separately from that, since Lineage is still based on Android 16 QPR2 it also doesn't include the many privacy and security patches not backported from Android 17.
Android ships many security patches as part of the QPR2 and yearly releases which are not backported to older releases. The backports to older releases are increasingly incomplete. Years ago, they stopped backporting any Low and Moderate severity patches to older releases and more recently they've been scaling back the amount of High and Critical severity patches which are backported. An official policy announcement was made to OEMs that they'd no longer backport many High and Critical severity patches where an LLM discovered the vulnerability internally due to the large volume of patches.
Pixels move to the latest OS releases and that means the firmware, kernel, driver and HAL code is only provided for those. It's most difficult for the major yearly releases due to the new API level but it's not trivial for QPR1, QPR2 and QPR3 either.
> It's not like any other device meets their ridiculous standards either
I don't think it's ridiculous to want the ability to relock the bootloader, for instance? Do you realise that if you cannot do that, you just break the whole Android security model right away?
It's a reasonable extrapolation of the current state. They want up to date patches, Google is already winding down open support for that, and it'll release in what, a year or two? Basically guaranteed to have outdated security patches on launch or they'll have to start maintaining their own. Might happen, but it seems unlikely they can hack it, as it were.
There are devices meeting these basic standards right now, and the entire family of them, no less.
GOS are vocal about safety and security of all the devices, not just seriously insecure Fairphones, and this article is about something different altogether, that's misinformation they've been hit with several times.
Fair criticism is fair, but yours is fabrications.
A problem I see is that GrapheneOS has a history of being extremely blunt about the shortcomings of alternatives, and of course alternatives (and users of alternatives) don't like getting that feeling that maybe they have been compromising on... something.
At least that's how I felt when I starting reading more after a few years of using /e/OS on my Fairphone 3. And the more I read, the more I realised that GrapheneOS was usually technically correct (their communication used to be a different story, but recently I feel like it has become a lot more professional, focusing on the technical side).
Really, the vast majority of technical criticisms I see against GrapheneOS are misinformed. I'm not saying that the commenters purposely say lies. Just that it all is technically non-trivial, and I totally understand that most people don't really understand how the Android security model works, for instance.
All that to say: I don't think that there is hypocrisy on the GrapheneOS side. They are very consistent on what they are trying to do.
Yeah it's hard to argue that their points are technically incorrect, after all this is the mobile ARM ecosystem we're talking about, with buggy ass locked down binary blobs with more security holes than swiss cheese that are never updated, as the industry standard. And in regards to Fairphone, user reviews have generally shown that their disregard for keeping their software updated by far eclipses any gains made by the repairability aspect. And I can sort of respect being brash about pointing the flaws out.
My main source of contention with Graphene is more ideological in the way they've gone about doing something about it: by using the Pixel. To quote that old batman comic meme: "This is the weapon of the enemy. We do not need it. We will not use it." At the end of the day, Google gets $1k or thereabouts for every GrapheneOS install which they can use to further advance the cause of mass surveillance, as an adware firm they have the most misaligned incentives of any manufacturer in existence. The company that is almost too eager to cave to every whim of the fascist in chief in hopes of it benefiting their bottom line. That's what I see as insanely hypocritical. By being this exclusive, it counts as a complete endorsement.
> By being this exclusive, it counts as a complete endorsement
I disagree. The only way they can prove that they can build a good system is to prove it on good hardware, and the Pixels are the only ones that meet the criteria. If GrapheneOS was running on random phones like LineageOS does, with unlocked bootloaders and/or signing with the Google test keys, then GrapheneOS would be no different from LineageOS (and wrappers on top of LineageOS like /e/OS).
Said differently, your complaint about GrapheneOS is the very thing that gives a reason to exist to GrapheneOS.
And I think GrapheneOS is proving its point: more and more users and finally got interest from Motorola. I am quite impressed and I hope it will continue growing and getting more and more interest by other manufacturers.
At the moment there is no other hardware manufacturer making similarly secure android phones.
*NONE*
There is no android hardware coming close. If there is, please name it. As far as I know it's only some unspecified, upcoming Motorola flagships.
If you call the unwilling, pragmatic choice an "intense hypocrisy", it's pretty clear to me you're simply driven by emotions and tribalism, that the facts don't matter.
Are you saying that using Google hardware equals using stock Google os?
You must be a little more.... Coherent with your metaphors :)
That's exactly my point. Imagine for a second that there's no Pixel. What would GOS do?
They could either ship nothing at all because suddenly nothing fits their made up standards, or they would have to lower them to fit reality. The standards are there only because the Pixel exists to fit them.
I think it's highly suspicious that they've set their demands up so that only one device fits the bill, if this wasn't FOSS people would be calling up anti-trust and asking how much Google paid them for regulatory capture.
Similarly, if there was a device that's more secure than the Pixel, would GOS support both, or rewise their rules so it only fits whatever they want? I guess we'll see once the Motorola lands.
But no, I'm saying using Google hardware is directly financially supporting the closed ecosystem of corporate control they're trying to fight against. And if we do go down speculation lane, I wouldn't find it impossible for Google to build in their own hardware level backdoors. Given that Snowden is still alive, I suppose it's unlikely, but the conflict of interest is clear as day here.
Huh, that one is funnier than I thought it could be.
There's absolutely no love for Google in the GOS crowd. None at all.
Now quick TL;DR so you can't pretend you missed something:
- It seems that GOS will support the new, secure Motorola flagships from the day 1. There's been an extensive support from vendor and much energy in the GOS team. There's hope Pixels can be abandoned
- GOS exists because there's a secure hardware from a vendor that releases all the necessary patches and offers long support. That's the secret. Please suggest the alternative hardware.
- Since you claim they “make up standards”, I invite you to list security features that are in your opinion superficial
- - -
LOL, all your suspicions are already answered, probably hundreds of times, starting from the very document you allude you read, https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
And silly as it might be, chances are that all the devices that will fit these requirements will be supported.
>> NONE
> That's exactly my point. Imagine for a second that there's no Pixel. What would GOS do?
Or, imagine your family woke up and turns out you never existed, what do they do now?
They develop the OS because there were secure devices they could develop their OS on. If you discuss based on the facts (I have my suspicions), you probably seem a list of the past devices no longer supported, but something they worked on
> They could either ship nothing at all
If there's no pixel they can't ship for pixel
> because suddenly nothing fits their made up standards,
Are you referring to the modest expectations for the mobile devices holding all the personal information and often access to whole live of the owner?
When you're buying a lock or alarm system for your home, what are your expectations? To me it seems you'd settle for the “absolute worst, something that can be bypassed with a butter knife, can't make life of the criminals too hard”
>made up standards,
Which one are made up? I'd like to see which one would you like to go.
- Making patches available quickly? Firmware patches? Frequent AOSP code releases?
- 5+ years of updates? Modern Linux kernel?
- Isolated radios, hardware secure element with throttling, protecting from attacks known from 90s?
- Full verified boot support with A/B slots, rollback protection (so the attacker cannot trivially just flash the ancient, vulnerable firmware), custom keys and relockable bootloader? Absolute bog standard, yet still not provided by MOST android hardware vendors
- Or, I don't know, MTE? Disk encryption? Protection for brute forcing disk encryption?
Which ones are “made up”, can you list the exact ones?
>or they would have to lower them to fit reality.
what reality? Vendors that allow, in 2026, to brute force PIN at the full speed? Or those who do not support custom signing keys, so the verified boot cannot be turned on? Or maybe these who do not offer relockable bootloader at all? Or maybe vendors known for delaying critical patches for months or don't offer any patches AT ALL (like one vendor still selling Android 15 devices, 6 months after the release of 17, when it's well known most bugs don't get backported patches)?
Can you give us a list of 2-3 modern devices that should have official GOS support?
>The standards are there only because the Pixel exists to fit them.
And this is a barefaced lie, need to call a spade a spade.
>I think it's highly suspicious that they've set their demands up so that only one device fits the bill,
Also lie, and a lazy one, it's 21 devices today. Oh well, I'll be charitable - maybe you just didn't check.
>if this wasn't FOSS people would be calling up anti-trust and asking how much Google paid them for regulatory capture.
By gods, what regulatory capture :D Do you just smash words together? Can you explain how GOS does, eeee, regulatory capture? :)
Oh, or maybe you're saying GOS forbids anyone from literally forking their repos and building own images?
What is that GOS does that stops you from adapting their releases to your own insecure, unpatched device? I really need some specifics.
>Similarly, if there was a device that's more secure than the Pixel, would GOS support both, or reowise their rules so it only fits whatever they want? I guess we'll see once the Motorola lands.
And this is the passage that tells me you're not discussing in a good faith. Work with Motorola on their flagships (plural) are well advanced, the expectation is they will be supported from the day of the release.
>But no, I'm saying using Google hardware is directly financially supporting the closed ecosystem of corporate control they're trying to fight against.
What? :D OK, so how much of the revenue Google has from the Pixel phone sales and what percentage of their revenue is that (I'm especially curious how it looks like next to ad earnings (direct and admob, etc), Google Cloud and Search.
What is the value of this argument? In % of Google revenue or B USD.
>And if we do go down speculation lane
No, not we, you do.
>I wouldn't find it impossible for Google to build in their own hardware level backdoors.
And THIS precisely is why GrapheneOS standards are so high, so if the crooked engineers or hardware exploits exist, the device still remain as secure as possible.
At this moment we either have to choose between a remote possibility of the highly sophisticated hardware backdoors that might be exploited by a nation state, or a hardware that is so insecure every thief can break into it in minutes.
I know which one I prefer. Which one do you want everyone to prefer? Seeing you're vocally against GOS on pixels, why do you insist on everyone moving to much less devices?
>Given that Snowden is still alive, I suppose it's unlikely,
And now we're at Dan Brown level of suspense
>but the conflict of interest is clear as day here.
Only if you've been staring into the sun for too long.
None of your allegations are new, they've been extensively addressed already.
> it's pretty clear to me you're simply driven by emotions and tribalism, that the facts don't matter.
Hmm I think this is a little unfair. GrapheneOS has technical reasons to support only Pixels, that's true. But those technical reasons are not trivial. Many people don't understand the Android security model, for instance. And if you don't understand it, without being in bad faith it's easy to not understand why it is important.
Android Open Source Project userspace code runs on any devices with Treble. That means it runs on any certified Android devices with the ability to install another OS. Updates and security features for the Linux kernel, drivers, firmware and hardware are still needed.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have end-of-life Linux kernel branches without security support. Those lag multiple years behind on providing full Android security updates. The 1-2 month delays for partial security backports is compared to the Android security bulletins and is actually a much longer delay compared to when the patches are made available to ship by OEMs.
In theory you can try to do that with Treble but in practice the experience will be horrible, there's not even a functional keyboard nor a functional call manager in there.
And yes all the Linux side of things is still missing.
That's not true. AOSP has a functional keyboard and Dialer app. There are also many third party apps for both available.
Linux does not mean glibc, systemd, Bash, GNU coreutils, Wayland/X11, Pulseaudio/Pipewire, etc. Android distributions are Linux distributions and are not missing what makes it Linux. The same goes for embedded and server Linux distributions without those components.
> they also compare the security to the "Android Open Source Project" as if it's a real thing
It is very much a real thing. You can build AOSP from sources and install it on a phone. Many Android devices run that (e.g. drone controllers).
> Is certainly much better than my Samsung flagship
Oh yeah, that's for sure. To share my experience, in terms of updates for me it has been GrapheneOS >>> Stock Android > /e/OS. I was running LineageOS/Cyanogen a decade ago but I don't remember and it was a different time anyway.
There are many vendors that are even worse than /e/OS in terms of updates. This is one of several reasons why Play Integrity is a farce, it has very little to do with security when vendors can be months late with critical vulnerabilities and still get to pass Play Integrity.
Basically anything that is not GrapheneOS, Pixel, or Samsung is in a deplorable state (Samsung not only rolls out security patches during the embargo period, they also do QPR2s).
Fairphone's updates are definitely much worse than recent Samsung flagships. It's the other way around to an extreme. Samsung does monthly security patches for their flagships and includes a large subset of security preview patches. It's not as good as GrapheneOS security preview releases but they're ahead of the Android security bulletins.
Fairphone is 1-2 months behind the Android security bulletins which are themselves 2-4 months behind the security preview patches. Fairphone takes a year to port to a new OS version shortly after launch and then ends up taking increasingly more time.
No you can't, AOSP doesn't even include a functional keyboard not a functional call manager nowadays. And I'm not even talking about the firmware side of things
Sure that might be enough for very basic hardware like your drone controller example but not a phone
Do we agree that the Android security model is baked into AOSP? Or would you say that the Play Services bring the security model to Google-certified Android, GrapheneOS implements its own security model from scratch, and LineageOS as well?
Assuming they share a big part of the security model, how would it "not make sense" to compare them? If AOSP is the baseline, saying that /e/OS is often weakening the security model and GrapheneOS is hardening it is a way to compare them. That makes complete sense to me.
I suppose it's a testament to their success, but, I have a fairphone 3 from almost 6 years now, and I'm a bit annoyed that they're basically "sunsetting it" (no more software updates, no more spare parts.)
My fairphone 2 had lasted 5 years, but was completely unusable at the end. My current phone works very well (again, huge kudos to the team if anyone is reading this), and I would not mind trying to reach the decade with it - but in a few months, someone (my bank, a shop, a 2FA, whatever) will ask for an unsupported android feature.
I know people will give me names of exotic non-android distros, but will they run my bank's app :/ ?
I had a similar experience but with the Fairphone 2. I never swapped out any parts because performance hardware upgrades never became available and it was superseded by the Fairphone 3. I've not invested again in a Fairphone since. I've no interest in paying extra for repairability I'm never going to use since they have the same obsolescence/replacement model as any other phone.
Fairphone 5 are already in a similar situation due to the kernels no longer having security support with no plan to take it over or move to a newer branch. Fairphone's more recent devices are headed to the same situation. The same thing happens with other components beyond the Linux kernel. People are using the devices with the belief they're receiving security support that's not being provided.
Great what they are doing - yet I found Shiftphone to be also fair, equally or better repairable and even more open for alternative Operating Systems. I think Fairphone supports 2 OSes officially, Shiftphone has a whole custom ROM list of ~10.
Ten? So like Android and Linux flavors? I'm not sure I even know of ten: e/OS, Calyx, Lineage, Ubuntu Touch, eh is there like Mobian or something still alive... how do they get to ten?? Do they also all fully work? Camera and calling (and not only on 2G) for example?
I'd be interested in the list, the website you've linked is super sparse (the full menu is like shop, some feel-good pages about device deposit and impact, blog, and contact us - no knowledge base, documentation, or somewhere where you'd expect to find OS info or even downloads)
Okay that's six: the ones I forgot are iodéOS and Postmarket (possibly the most popular Linux mobile, idk how I forgot about them), plus Shift's own custom OS which I'll count as two because there's a googleful and a googleless variant which is a relatively significant change, plus LineageOS and e/OS which I had mentioned. That's a lot of choice indeed! Thanks for the link
SailfishOS is another popular mobile Linux distro you should be aware of - it's been around for a long, long time - in fact its heritage can be traced all the way back to Nokia's Maemo OS (circa 2005), which became famous in the community with the Nokia 900.
And then in 2010, Maemo merged with Intel's Moblin to become MeeGo (featured on the Nokia N9). The MeegGo engineers who were let go (due to Nokia x Microsoft) then created Mer, and eventually started a new company called Jolla, who created SailfishOS based on Mer.
It's been 13 years already since SailfishOS was out, and if you include the Maemo heritage, it makes it the oldest surviving mobile Linux distribution.
The recently released Fairphone 6+ runs on Android 16. I had to look that up on Wikipedia, their website doesn't even clearly state that. Android 16 is 14 months old at the moment. Android 17 was released to manufacturers 6 months ago and had a general release 2 months ago.
So why does a brand new phone run an operating system from over a year ago? Does it really take over 6 months to update a phone to a new version of Android?
How am I supposed to believe a company is committing to supporting a phone for a long time when at release it already runs outdated software?
Security is the big reason to want 17 over 16, though I believe 16 is getting a lot of those features backported still.
Otherwise, I preferred 16. The UX, AI, and all the other garbage I really could do without. I don't love it. My phone (pixel 9) feels slower and the battery is now draining like crazy.
Android 17 is required for full Android security updates. Only a subset of patches are backported to older versions and that's decreasing. Android 17 is also required for the latest and greatest privacy/security protections which are not backported. There have been massive privacy and security improvements in each yearly Android release.
Android 17 is required for full Android security updates. Only a subset of patches are backported to older versions and that's decreasing. Android 17 is also required for the latest and greatest privacy/security protections which are not backported. There have been massive privacy and security improvements in each yearly Android release. There have also been far more improvements than those. Being unaware of it doesn't mean it hasn't been done.
Getting security updates for issues that are not marked high/critical. These are not your typical RCE, but they are used in exploit chains.
For those not aware, Android Security Bulletins only cover high/critical vulnerabilities. There are also rumors that Google will soon stop fixing vulnerabilities in not-actual versions that were discovered by Google in LLM-driven vulnerability discovery. There was recently a GrapheneOS thread about it.
> There are also rumors that Google will soon stop fixing vulnerabilities in not-actual versions that were discovered by Google in LLM-driven vulnerability discovery.
These are not rumors. It's an official announcement from Google to OEMs and we have access to it.
Android Security Bulletins are a list of the High and Critical severity patches backported to older Android versions. At the time a bulletin is published, the patches have been available to OEMs to ship for 2-4 months. Fairphone is nearly always 1-2 months behind the latest bulletin but it can get much worse over time.
Android Security Bulletins do not cover the vast majority of Linux kernel security patches. They only cover an extremely small subset tied to Android. The Linux kernel has a massive tsunami of security patches on an ongoing basis. Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel without security support. They're close to not updating the kernel at all anymore. Their more recent devices will end up in the same situation.
The Linux kernel is not the only component ending up unmaintained while the devices are still presented as supported.
Android 17 is required for full Android security updates. Only a subset of patches are backported to older versions and that's decreasing. Android 17 is also required for the latest and greatest privacy/security protections which are not backported. There have been massive privacy and security improvements in each yearly Android release.
I belive you are mistaken. Android 17 final was "released" 6-7 weeks ago.
But Google being Google, this release is pretty much useless until Samsung et al deal with all bugs and performance issues, which will take 2-4 months.
As a Linux, macOS and Windows user it’s really strange to me that you can’t just install the latest OS on your device. Even my iPhone updates to the latest version as soon as it’s released.
Seriously, why can't Android just be installed? Are they building it like the old-timey kernel before modules and embedding drivers in a giant monolith or something ridiculous?
Certification takes time and probably overlaped with the phone development. Fairephone is small compared to e.g. samsung and they describe themself more "stable" and long-term support than bleeding edge.
Fairphone 5 and earlier also have end-of-life Linux kernel branches without security support. Fairphone's more recent devices are headed to the same situation. In practice, the same thing happens with other components beyond the Linux kernel.
Fairphones have 1-2 months of delay for partial security backports to older releases from the beginning and much longer delays for full updates. Android 17 is required for full Android security updates. Only a subset of patches are backported to older versions and that subset is decreasing.
Android 17 is also required for the latest and greatest privacy/security protections which are not backported. There have been massive privacy and security improvements in each yearly Android release.
Even worse: Google actually does four releases releases per year (major and QPRs), of which QPR2 is also provided to OEMs. Only Samsung and GrapheneOS roll out QPR2 releases.
this is 100% in the hands of the SoC manufacturer.
Android versions are locked to kernel versions, which are locked to binary drivers to run your hardware. there's no way around that and you can't reverse engineer or do anything if you want that SoC vendor to continue to fulfill your orders (which you're already at the bottom of the fulfilment list because of low volumes)
Qualcomm provides 8 years of support from platform launch.
Android versions are not locked to kernel versions. In general, new Android versions do not require new kernel versions.
In practice, all kernel drivers are open source including for Snapdragon, Exynos and MediaTek. The kernel drivers can be ported to new major kernel versions regardless of whether the firmware and drivers are still supported. The benefit of updating the kernel and kernel drivers without firmware and userspace driver updates is very low. Rewriting the userspace driver code as open source code on top of the kernel drivers is also entirely possible. It's a lot of work and there's a lack of a security motivation to do it due to needing up-to-date firmware with patches for serious remote vulnerabilities and other issues.
If this were genuinely 100% a Qualcomm limitation, I'd expect every Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 phone to be similarly stuck. But Motorola's Edge 70 Fusion uses the same SoC and was already in Android 17 beta testing in February, and Nothing's Phone (4a) and OnePlus Nord CE 6 are also slated for Android 17. So it seems the SoC isn't inherently preventing Android 17.
to promise 5 year of security updates your SoC needs to also have that support for that time frame + part of your developmeant/production time (as you can't the last steps of development/production before that chip is released). Lastly you need to add the duration during which you promise the 5 years security updates.
to put it simple for a 5 year guarantee you need ~8 better 10 year support for the SoC, measured from is release date
a lot of phone SoC (which tend to get Android porting priority by their producer) have shorter support. Hence why the fp5 had a SoC from a product line designed for industrial embedded appliances instead of a phone SoC...
but the main reason is likely simpler:
They are relatively small and likely will updated FP5, 6,6+ to Android 16 roughly at the same time to not have to support multiple major Android versions for the same time.
Still as long as Android 15 still gets security this doesn't matter too much. Recent major Android version IMHO often have been more disruptive then helpful. At least for me, but my guess it's this applies widely for the kind of audience which pay more because they plan to actual have the same smartphone in use for more the 3 years ;)
Qualcomm provides 8 years of support from platform launch. OEMs/ODMs need to choose to pay for it. Fairphone doesn't ship proper updates from the beginning due to lagging months behind on incomplete backports and years behind on complete updates.
It's entirely possible to port to a new kernel LTS branch regardless of what the SoC vendor provides, but they don't either way. Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel branch without security support. The Linux kernel is an immensely important part of security on a device against both local, proximity and fully remote attacks. Not having security support for the kernel means the device lacks real ongoing security support.
Android 15 does not receive most privacy/security patches but rather backports of many High and Critical severity patches. Only the latest OS releases receive Low and Moderate severity patches. A growing number of High and Critical severity patches are no longer backported due to how many vulnerabilities are now being discovered.
Still as long as Android 15 still gets security this doesn't matter too much.
It does matter, because Android Security Bulletins only contain fixes for high/critical vulnerabilities. But all the other vulnerabilities can be useful in exploit chains. Add to that that ASBs have a three month embargo, but GrapheneOS and Samsung roll all/some patches out before they are in a security bulletin. So phones like the Fairphone have critical/high CVEs have been known for up to three months for anyone that looks.
but the main reason is likely simpler:
I think the main reason is that they do not do most hardware and software development by themselves, it's done by their Chinese ODM T2Mobile, for which Fairphone is probably just another customer.
Everything is at glacial speed. For instance, Android 16 on FP6 has some IPv6 bugs that breaks WiFi connections after a few minutes for a substantial number of their customers [1]. Six months later, they still haven't been able to properly fix it.
[1] The issues itself is probably not restricted to WiFi, it's that some brands of WiFi routers trigger one or more of the condition. One of which is sending a router advertisement with a lifetime of 0 for the IPv6 prefix used by the network. The connection handling code goes in a state where it misses the next prefix advertisement.
That sounds horrible. I can understand why Apple makes their own chips with the practices that these SoC manufacturers are getting away with.
Perhaps the EU can step in and force these SoC companies to change their way of working so that a user can simply install Android 17 with a few clicks regardless of their hardware (to a point). Like how desktop computers work.
Desktop computers work because Intel and AMD provide support to their chips to Windows and Linux, because these chips are used for desktop and servers, and these OS are what their customers use.
Mobile chips are not used for desktop and servers, not used for Windows and Linux. They are used for Android, and that's a 98% of the market. The customers of the chips (the companies which develop devices on the chips) just don't use Windows or Linux, that's why there's no reason for a chip company to support it.
Android does not use desktop/server firmware, desktop/server bootloader, and even desktop/server stock Linux kernel. They have their own Generic Kernel Image with the Android patches on top, strict Google requirements for the booting and working process, etc.
PC operating systems are supplied by third parties that are not part of the computer manufacturer, motherboard or processor vendor. All component manufacturers must write drivers for Windows, certify them with Microsoft, and make sure that their device works properly ideally on any computer. You, the user, buy (or obtain) a copy of the operating system from the operating system company.
The operating system for a appliance (smartphone) comes with the appliance itself (as a bundle), and is supplied by the appliance manufacturer, not by operating system manufacturer. The manufacturer of electronic components does not need to contact the creators of the operating systems, they write a driver for Android kernel (yes, for Android kernel, with all its wakelock subsystems and such in mind) and gives it to the manufacturer of the appliance directly (and sometimes only supplies hardware, and the driver must be made by the manufacturer of the appliance).
It's inaccurate information. Qualcomm is willing to provide 8 years of support from SoC platform launch. Android also fully supports using a newer userspace on top of an outdated device support platform. Treble provided a very good implementation of it.
Fairphone chose to use T2Mobile as their ODM designing and making their devices. They chose to use the SoC platforms they did. They chose to focus very little on providing updates to the point that the Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel without security support. Fairphone 5 is still presented as supported with many years to come but it's not getting a large portion of the high importance security patches anymore.
SoC vendor (and correcting myself, every componet vendor, such as camera, touch screen, flash controler, etc) must make the drivers available TO YOU to ship to your customers. picking out binary blobs and reusing is what grapheneos does, and ia highly frowned uppon and will get you blacklisted
Anyone have any updates on why this device can’t support or get behind Graphene OS? A repairable and secure phone is my desired option for a phone that’s truely mine and I’m sure this is true for many others also.
From my understanding it’s not there as the Graphene team says that fairphone haven’t taken security hardware seriously and there’s key hardware security features missing that means they are not even interested to look at supporting the device.
Keen for latest updates on this, happy to be corrected.
I believe the GrapheneOS team demands, in particular, a security feature called Memory Tagging Extensions (MTE). This feature has a phone's processor attach a "tag" to each memory location saying what's stored there and requires accesses to that memory to bear a matching tag. Buffer overflow type attacks are effectively prevented because a read into the adjoining region having a different tag gets rejected.
This feature is usually NOT present in desktop computers, and has only really been implemented by the Google Pixel hardware so far. It's unclear why it's viewed as being so critically necessary for Graphene: MTE is certainly useful but I personally wouldn't say its absence indicates an "insecure" device, and it imposes both a clear performance (and battery life!) penalty and a significant hardware burden on the SoC manufacturer. It's a pretty significant trade-off.
Anyway, that's the biggest single reason why GrapheneOS devs say "this hardware is not adequately secure": 99% of phone chips are excluded because they do not support MTE.
While yes I am on GrapheneOS' side on these issues, I'm surprised nobody clones the GrapheneOS repo and simply disables the minimal handful of features which block it from working on devices. Maybe calling the clone CarbonOS? If MTE is required to boot GrapheneOS and Fairphones don't have MTE, then Fairphone clones GrapheneOS and disables MTE for its images. Graphene has so many features beyond just hardware security that other Androids lack, that it would be worthwhile to do this and it would still be higher security than the others (even if it's below GrapheneOS' own full security). Sensor & network permissions, storage & contact scopes, autoreboot, scrambled pin, radio auto-off, MAC address randomization, and more, I'm sure don't require MTE or Titan etc. Just follow GrapheneOS as upstream, making sure that the minimal set of changes needed to get it working on other/older devices transfers with the new updates.
Fairphones are missing many of the required features and don't provide reasonable updates. An incomplete port of GrapheneOS won't provide decent security for users. It won't have decent encryption for the vast majority of users not using a strong passphrase and it won't defend well against exploits. It will end up with an end-of-life kernel and drivers/firmware lagging far behind on updates.
MTE is required for the majority of the additional protection provided by GrapheneOS against memory corruption exploits. Nearly all remote exploits and most local exploits involve memory corruption. MTE is only going to become more important as we implement deeper integration for it.
I think it would just be a lot of work. And if you went down that road, you would be against other teams with bigger marketing and a bigger community.
As in: people who do care enough to understand the technical arguments tend to go for GrapheneOS when they can. But if you build a "degraded GrapheneOS", you are not targetting those. For someone who doesn't care about what GrapheneOS brings, why would they use your system versus /e/OS?
DivestOS was a thing at some point, which was technically very interesting. But there wasn't much of a differentiator since the people who already cared about what DivestOS was doing were probably already looking at getting GrapheneOS.
Lack of MTE is not the only huge reason why the GrapheneOS team refuses most devices. Most vendors' lack of timely bugfixes for device-specific drivers and firmware, and no commitment to keep providing bugfixes for a number of years is another major factor.
Still, a 'degraded' GrapheneOS as my proposed CarbonOS, beats /e/, Lineage, Calyx, and stock. Not doing CarbonOS is throwing the baby (non-hardware hardening and features) out with the bathwater (the lack of hardware hardening). I for one do not wholly rely on Titan and use a long alphanumeric password on my primary profile to ensure BFU disk encryption isn't violated, while living in secondary daily-driver profiles which are PIN protected for ease of use. If I suspect phone seizure becomes a non-infinitesimal possibility, I can just reboot! Additionally, I would love to see an option in GOS that allows me to change the action bound to the panic sequence (5+ rapid presses of power): I would never call police using that sequence, I would 100x rather that sequence cause a shutdown instead. That way if I am asked to hand over my phone I can just panic sequence it as I am removing it from my pocket. As it stands now I would have to pause to interact with the screen to shut it off, significantly increasing the likelihood of the adversary snatching it before I could get it into BFU.
The majority of our added exploit protections are based on hardware security features and that will only be increasing over time. MTE, PAC, BTI, hardware-based blocking of USB connections/data and far more are hardware features used to implement protections in software. MTE is going to be a growing part of how we build memory corruption defenses in the kernel and userspace. Once 6th/7th gen Pixels are end-of-life and we finally flip the switch on using MTE in all user installed apps by default, we can focus even more on expanding MTE-based protections.
The vast majority of users do not use a strong passphrase. The recommended high security setup is a strong passphrase and 2-factor fingerprint+PIN secondary unlock for convenience. Using a weaker PIN for secondary users for convenience is not our recommended approach.
MTE is not the only blocker here. Pixel 7 series do not have it and are currently supported by GrapheneOS. There are other concerns regarding things like a proper secure element implementation and timely firmware/binary blob updates.
GrapheneOS requires MTE for any newly added devices. Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series devices do not meet the current requirements. Pixel 8 and later are the devices meeting the full requirements.
Devices are supported until end-of-life rather than being dropped when they no longer meet the requirements. Pixel 6 is nearly end-of-life and Pixel 7 will be end-of-life in a bit over a year. Both have 5 years of updates from launch as opposed to 7 years for the Pixel 8 and later.
We want to require 7 years of updates for new devices rather than 5 but have left it at 5 to help budget devices meet our requirements.
Right, but still my CarbonOS idea ('degraded' GrapheneOS) is better than /e/, Lineage, Calyx, and stock. By 'degraded' I mean the minimal changes to current GrapheneOS needed to get it working on a given GrapheneOS-unsupported device.
An incomplete port of GrapheneOS to Fairphones will be missing many of the core security features and won't have reasonable security updates. Fairphones are nowhere close to reasonably secure devices.
Most people expect to have decent encryption without a strong passphrase, at least 5 years of security updates and a lot more. Fairphone says they provide updates far longer than they do for many components, and those come with substantial delays. Fairphone 5 and earlier have end-of-life kernels without security support. That's a very bad situation and is widely ignored. The more recent devices are headed to the same situation for the Linux kernel and other components.
That's highly inaccurate information. MTE is included on a large number of smartphones beyond Pixels. It's heavily integrated into iOS on the iPhone 17 as their Memory Integration Enforcement feature. MTE enables massive security improvements against exploits and Pixels have had it since the Pixel 8 in October 2023.
Traditional desktop computers have atrocious privacy and security throughout hardware, firmware and software. That isn't a relevant comparison for GrapheneOS. Recent Mac hardware does support MTE and so will non-Mac devices using Snapdragon chips. Qualcomm has added MTE support for their latest flagship mobile SoC platform and will bring it elsewhere. MediaTek and Exynos have also added MTE support.
MTE does not have the substantial performance or battery life impact you're portraying it as having. It's also far more useful than you're portraying it as being. Apple would not have extensively integrated MTE if they had to give up significant performance or battery life. iPhones have a lot of focus on security but aren't willing to make significant sacrifices in those areas for it, at least for the default settings. Their Memory Integrity Enforcement entirely based on MTE is always enabled in the kernel and the large portion of userspace where they deployed it. It's not only used for Lockdown Mode.
I've always been a bit curious about Fairphone, but as I only get phones that cost less than $200 (and use them until they physically break), I'll probably never get one.
Still only on my second smartphone, so I'm not worried about producing more e-waste.
> Beta Edition PinePhones are aimed solely at early adopters. More specifically, only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of users with extensive Linux experience.
Also, if you include taxes it's not sub $200. My current phone was about $160 including taxes when I bought it. Looks interesting, though.
Yes, but it depends on what you want to do with it. HN is still fast enough on it with Firefox, the terminal works well, too. Good DEs like https://sxmo.org/ are snappy.
EU regulations already mandate that the batteries should be user-replaceable and other parts easily replaceable. The difference between Fairphone and the competition will narrow in the future.
Except for the fact that Samsung is the 800 pounds gorilla in the smartphone space which you'll know will be around for some time. How long is Fairphone going to last? Maybe the founders want to retire early and sell to the highest bidder.
I'd much rather see them running GrapheneOS or /e/OS on it also.
There’s a get-out clause in the law that allows your battery not to be required to be user replaceable if it can last 1,000 cycles while remaining at 80+%. Apple’s phones certainly meet that these days, and I imagine Samsung’s will as well (though I’m not sure if silicon carbide changes that at all).
Are ya'll really repairing your phones? I replace mine when it can't run Google Maps smoothly anymore.
After 4-5 years, on every phone I've ever had, user interactions begin to lag noticeably. Apps launch much more slowly. Intense graphical apps like maps become frustrating to use. At some point I can't take it anymore and replace the phone, long before its physical parts or battery have worn out.
I've bought new a Google Pixel 7a two years ago, paid for it 400 euros. After 1 year I've dropped it, landed on a corner, screen completely broken, replacement costed screen costed me nearly 120 euros (and was not an original screen, otherwise I would have spent more). Just costs much money because of the fucking fingerprint reader under the screen that why couldn't put it in the back of the phone as they did for many years. Broken it again, fuck it I will not repair it again, with the cost of the repair I may as well buy a new phone.
Then I've decided that is worth either spending money on phones whose replacement parts doesn't cost half of the phone itself, or just buying the cheapest Xiaomi or similar chineese brand phone and when it breaks buy a new one or repair it (funny enough cheap phones are more repairable than expensive ones, so I usually repair them).
Genuinely, how do you make your phone so slow? I've been using my s10 for 7 years, and besides the minor crack in the corner of the screen from being dropped, and constantly juggling storage because I hoard media, it works as well as it did when it was new.
I had the same experience. Repeatedly. IMO it's the software, not the hardware. The issues always start/get worse with a big update to Android or the main Google apps.
running the official bloatware (firmware) I presume?
It happened to me when I was using shitty brands like Xiaomi that include a lot of malware and spyware in their official firmwares. Not anymore on grapheneOS (and /e/os on my daughter's phone).
The official firmware, yes, but also Fairphones for years, not Xiaomi or the like (FP2 -> FP3 -> FP5 now). So the "bloat" in question is the Google stuff.
My family's Pixels have all lasted physically long enough for Google to stop supporting them. My wife was annoyed when I told her she needed a new one because from her perspective there was nothing wrong with her existing one ( lack of security updates is not on her radar.)
I've replaced batteries on Pixel 3 XL and Pixel 6 Pro, both having run GrapheneOS. I use OSMAnd~ with no network permission (except during maps/POI updates). OSMAnd~ shows me where ALPRs are, so I can plan my routes around Flock. :^)
I would love a Fairphone, but no headphone jack is a nonstarter for me. Still blows me away that a company saying they are focused on longevity would get rid of a universal audio interface that we've had for decades. In the article they claim it's to fit other features in, but frankly that's not a believable claim. Other manufacturers manage to get a headphone jack in just fine, without any noticeable downside.
The headphone jack is inside USB-C connector. You can use USB-C-to-3.5mm passive (!) cable to connect your 3.5mm headphones, or you can buy 3.5mm headphones with USB-C audio connection.
There's no additional DAC involved, the analog audio is already on a USB-C pins.
I can't find anything about that in the article or the Fairphone 6 manual. Do you have a source for this?
My main problem with USB-C headphones on my Android phone is how unreliable they are. But if the USB-C port can just pass through an analog audio connection, that should work much better, I expect.
At this point headphones with an usb-c connection have become nearly as common as 3.5mm trs ones. Additionally you can permamently hook a small usb-c dac with 3.5mm trs output to the headphones of your choice.
Only issue is some very cheap ones are actually bluetooth headphones in disguise where the usb-c connection only exist to power the bt recepter inside the headphone. I find this completely stupid.
> If there are tradeoffs, if would be nice if the customers can decide what to have, in a modular product.
A "modular product" has tradeoffs in and of itself (such as size, price, water resistance, …), which presumably would not fly for a majority of customers.
Yes, the water resistance is what keeps my phone from dying if I go for a hike in the rain or a small splashy boat ride, replacing the water damaged motherboard isn't as sustainable as buying a used flagship phone from an earlier time.
Given how severely that hard requirement restricts your available options, I'd suggest adapting to the USB-C audio world. No, it's not as nice as a headphone jack. But it is a relatively small con to just stick an adapter onto the ends of your 3.5mm devices and replace it a few times a year when it breaks. And yes, you can get a "charge and listen at the same time" adapter.
The Fairphone 6+ looks really interesting but I'm not seeing it having the ability to wirelessly charge. I exclusively charge my Pixel 10 XL Pro (25w+) phone on a wireless charger now in the car and at my house and really like it, I don't want to go back to plugging in a USBC cable anymore unless it's an emergency. Am I missing something? Does it support Qi 2?
Was really happy with my FP3 until it died: "sudden death". No power, nothing. According to their own forum, it's a very common problem after a while. Of course there is no warranty and replacing the mainboard is not possible...
You always have the right to a minimum 2-year guarantee from the moment you received the goods. However, national rules in your country may give you extra protection.[1]
Would be neat if Fairphone would build a real compact smartphone, something with 4" or 5" screen. Current device is too large for human pockets and all those protruding camera bumps and buttons are really uncomfortable.
Nobody is suggesting Fairphone has also replaced Google/Android re SW/OS. What they've arguably done I'd improve the existing situation - surely that counts for something?
There is also nothing precluding them from dropping Android in the future and putting effort into something like Sailfish OS.
Fairphone provides very poor updates much worse than iPhone, Pixel, Samsung flagship or many other devices. They lag far behind partial backports of security patches to older releases of Android. They lag a year or more behind full security patches which are not all backported to older Android releases, similarly to iOS. Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life kernel without security support and the same fate awaits the newer devices.
Unlike AOSP, SailfishOS has a largely closed source user interface and application layer. They still have their own UI and application layer so it's strange to portray Android using a different one than desktop Linux as a problem and a closed source alternative to it as a solution. SailfishOS drastically reduces privacy, security, usability, battery life and app compatibility compared to simply using AOSP. It's not possible to build a project like GrapheneOS on top when so much of the OS code is closed source rather than only many mainstream apps people want to use.
Now that Fairphone officially sells phones in the United States, I am likely going to get one specifically because it supports postmarketOS. My Pinephone is so slow that I have never really used it for anything beyond testing.
Reminder that Android is not Linux. The Linux phone experience is completely different from Android. People who utilize distro's like Ubuntu touch or postmarketOS demand that even firmware level binaries are open sourced. GrapheneOS is great, but it's not Linux, and not even close. If we start to confuse the two, we're confronted with the question about Unix, which is shared among both Android and iOS, so you could even say that Android is technically an iPhone. This is obviously wrong but utilizes the same logic as people claiming Android is Linux.
> demand that even firmware level binaries are open sourced.
The hardware and firmware for those devices is closed source. It's strange to claim users demand something which is not the case. GrapheneOS users want open source hardware and firmware too, but it isn't for any of these projects.
Linux is a kernel. Embedded, server and mobile Linux distributions without glibc, gcc, GNU coreutils, systemd, D-Bus, Wayland, Pipewire, etc. are Linux too. Linux is not a specific desktop software stack that's largely used on FreeBSD and elsewhere too. Android Open Source Project and GrapheneOS are Linux distributions.
I love the phone, but I really hate the "ethical" framing of device repairability. This is an engineering problem and we don't need to twist it through a moral framework.
Phones that are repairable have superior engineering, not superior morality.
It’s both superior engineering-wise and morally. The moral framing is probably more popular with folks that don’t care about engineering superiority, too.
Surely it's morally superior to limit resource use by using things for longer and repairing them when broken. I often use a weak Kantian Imperative that I couch as "if everyone did what you do would it be good, sustainable?" as a _guide_ to moral choice, it's a starting point really, but from that I think moral superiority of more repairable goods follows.
Parts for the Fairphone 2 (2015) and Fairphone 3 (2019) aren't available anymore, but I suppose that's not all that surprising after 11 respective 7 years.
Afair, they started running out of some Fairphone 3 spare parts around 2024 and kept the ones they still had for warranty repairs. Source: I own one (and switched to the Fairphone 6 early this year).
presumably longer if they were more popular and repair shops stock up on the parts. I assume most FP users are fairly tech savvy and would just purchase multiple components that are more likely to fail as a just-in-case (much like I do for bearings, headlights, and other small parts for my car)
Reminds me of the cold steel throwing axe that I bought that specifically has replaceable handles in case you break one. No one actually sells the handles though!
I bought a fair phone 2 when I lived in Germany in 2016. Got a software update when I moved back to Australia. Bricked it. The kernel debug interface has no standard header, and required a fine pitch soldering iron header. I rented a German post box to send it to, as you need a European address for support. I tried to send it twice, and it was refused by German customs. I gave up and now I just buy cheap second hand Motorolas and unlock the bootloader, put lineageos on them. I think giving new life to discarded devices is more ethical anyway.
Didn't they launch only their first device (considering this is the sixth generation) in the USA a few months ago? Hopefully the replacement parts are yet to come. I'm not sure why it's so difficult, perhaps it's that they're stretched too thin and barely managed to get the base device to market there at all
I bought one a few years ago. Good device, too big for my hands (back then, there were still smaller options so I bought one of those smaller ones in second-hand). Not having spare parts available would make me hesitate since that's like 50% of the point (fair sourcing being the other half), but besides that it's a (big) phone like any other
Early Fairphones were not necessarily designed for repairability. That is a principle that has emerged significantly in the last few iterations. The FP4 was the first that was really designed and marketed as fully modular from what I remember, and parts are still available.
For the American piece, the FP6 was the first available from OEM in the US.
I still have various spare parts of my fp2: screen, camera, battery. This was in 2015 and it was modular and repairable. For the fp1, it was possible to replace the battery.
When I had a Fairphone 4, regulars on the community forum repeatedly reminded everyone that repairability was not a primary goal of Fairphone, ethical consumerism was, and any longevity and repairability was secondary or coincidental.
Yes, that goes against most of Fairphone's own advertising, but it was consistent with my experience of the phone and discussions on the forum: security updates frequently so far out of date that some software could not be run, flimsy components inconsistent with advertising (yes, the battery was nominally swappable, but the snaps on the back would break easily, and support would claim that it was not intended to be removed regularly), parts that were frequently out of stock, and of course, whole new phone designs every generation rather than Framework-like component upgrades.
It seems like they may have improved since then, but those problems, along with the atrocious security (FP4 used AOSP's public test signing keys, with publicly-available private keys, for its firmware) and sketchiness around specs, standards and openness (especially for the camera), generally turned me off the company.
Happy FairPhone 4 user here. Running 3+ years, only replaced the battery once. Aim to keep it 7-10 years, barring unforeseen events like theft. Not going to replace it just because a newer model is released.
Someone stole my fairphone 4, then threw it on the ground. So it seems like i'll keep it a while longer
I've been running mine for ~4ish I think, on my third battery and might run out my fourth because it's feeling a _little_ sluggish at times.
I am waiting for the next FP model where I can use a USB-C/dp external display and then I'm all over it.
That's a lot, I usually use old phones from family members, most of them have 4 years of use by the time I get them and I get a whole day of usage from the battery.
Honestly, not sure. I use Firefox Mobile pretty heavily during the day and I suspect it's part of the drain. I'm not too concerned by it and I just try to replace the battery every ~1-1.5 years.
What is happening to your batteries? I'm on something like year 6 on my Redmi and my battery is fine. Am I simply lucky?
I also never had battery issues with my fp4, except it sometimes starts draining really fast. Fix is too charge while phone is shutdown.
> Aim to keep it 7-10 years
Security updates will end 01 Sep 2028.
https://endoflife.date/fairphone
Many important security updates will end much earlier. The table is based on how long Fairphone will provide incomplete security updates, not how long the device will truly receive security support.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have end-of-life Linux kernel branches without security support. Fairphone's more recent devices are headed to the same situation. In practice, the same thing happens with other components beyond the Linux kernel.
Ouch, that sucks.
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Not an expert, but I recently heard that apparently not everything is perfect in fairphone land: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand...
GrapheneOS is like a veteran and war zone expert: for them, not only the external environment is considered extremely hostile that you should leave your house only wearing an armor and with bodyguards, but also the internal environment is hostile: your bodyguards could be bribed and work against you, that's why you need to somehow be protected against that as well.
Just as physical security, digital security most of the time not as radical, and tradeoffs are usually accepted, especially when they are "invisible": hardware and software security features are usually not mentioned in the specs and the regular and even power user just don't know most of them and what do they do.
When GrapheneOS says "private" and "secure", they mean top-of-the-line security features, updates as soon as possible, all available mitigations against zero-days and insecure code which will limit the impact before the patch, etc. Security as in a killdozer.
When other say "private" and "secure", most of the time it means: "we've followed all the recommendations applicable to our development budget, device price point, and support life time". Graphene does not like that definition of these words.
For smartphone, chip manufacturer goal is not to protect the user at all costs, but to provide reasonable security features for the price.
BUT the goal of chip manufacturer to protect the device at all costs is for… game consoles! That's why Xbox, PlayStation, Switch all run on a custom silicon and not an ordinary chips!
> That's why Xbox, PlayStation, Switch all run on a custom silicon and not an ordinary chips!
Not really. Xbox and PlayStation both run on pretty standard AMD Zen 2 chips. Somewhat customized, but standard enough that people by binned playstation 5 motherboards to use as computers with normal OS'es (lookup BC-250). The last gen with more customized chips was the PS3/Xbox360 era, when both went with a variant of PowerPC, same as Gamecube/Wii/WiiU.
Switch runs on basically the same Nvidia Tegra CPU/GPU as multiple android tablets.
I think you should listen to bringup of Linux on Playstation talk from CCC to understand that those platforms are much more than just "somewhat customized".
There are whole sections of peripheral chips missing and they behave quite a bit differently with how they bootstrap and where things are mapped in memory.
Peripheral chips, non-standard bootloaders, custom hypervisors and similar is not what people mean when they say "run on a custom silicon".
?
Even Steam Deck has a custom APU made specifically for it. Call it "customized" if you don't like "custom".
The steam decks APU was designed for Magic Leap 2. It is one of the worst examples you could choose for a chip specifically designed for the thing it is in.
No, they mean customized SoCs which what those chips are as well
So "run on a custom silicon" should not mean anything "custom" in regards to architecture or ISA or even microarchitecture?
If that is true then a lot (or most) of android phones run on "custom silicon" and the term is meaningless.
>but standard enough that people by binned playstation 5 motherboards to use as computers
That doesn't mean that all the features are enabled right from the factory, or that the compatibility with already existing features is lost.
Modern chip's security features are pretty complicated and include hardware patches, hardware debug authentication, multiple provisioning states (and multi-key hierarchy for that), RMA states to clear all the private information, etc.
>Switch runs on basically the same Nvidia Tegra CPU/GPU as multiple android tablets.
Yes, and the one which got cracked with a bootrom vulnerability ;)
That's a pretty working motivation for a chip company to improve their chip security when the company as beefy as Nintendo tells them that their chip is vulnerable they're losing money because the customers can play for free ;). I'm pretty sure patchable bootroms started to be common only after Switch hack.
This is not an apt analogy.
A couple of the tenets of computing security are:
- Defense in depth - Principle of least privilege
It is a foundational reality that software (especially in unsafe languages) will invariably have vulnerabilities. Defense in depth and least privilege have compounding effects by forcing attackers to chain multiple exploits to achieve a compromised device, rather than a single vulnerability.
GrapheneOS shows how much can be accomplished on top of relatively secure platforms to begin with (AOSP, Pixel Stock OS, etc.) without sacrificing nearly any usability to the end user (barring manufactured hurdles like Play Integrity). It makes it more damning that many "privacy" OSes and devices cannot even meet the baseline level of privacy and security that AOSP provides, but degrade it.
Firmware and driver neglect and the lack of secure element utilization is not "reasonble security for the price".
On the other hand, my experience with /e/OS on a Fairphone was that it was 4 years behind in updates as compared to Stock Android on that Fairphone.
I don't think that expecting security updates it being an extremist, or is it?
>GrapheneOS is like a veteran and war zone expert: for them, not only the external environment is considered extremely hostile that you should leave your house only wearing an armor and with bodyguards, but also the internal environment is hostile: your bodyguards could be bribed and work against you, that's why you need to somehow be protected against that as well.
Yeah, iPhoens are made that way as well. It's just caring about the privacy of your users.
> When GrapheneOS says "private" and "secure", they mean top-of-the-line security features, updates as soon as possible, all available mitigations against zero-days and insecure code which will limit the impact before the patch, etc. Security as in a killdozer.
I think it's deceptive because people think they will get better privacy/security with a /e/ fairphone when it's actually much worse than an iPhone.
> people think they will get better privacy/security with a /e/ fairphone when it's actually much worse than an iPhone
Does /e/OS illegally collect users' data for ads and sends a lot of telemetry to their servers like Apple? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34299433, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26639261
/e/ does have services collecting data on their users which isn't disclosed including user tracking via unique identifiers in the update client. They also spent years sending user speech data to OpenAI without informing users beyond fine print in the terms of use. It's presented as not using Google services but has a whole bunch of Google services with privileged access enabled by default. It even downloads and runs Google Play executables such as droidguard by default with privileged access far beyond the regular app sandbox.
It's amazing how people still fall for the marketing. Apple is an ad company, just like Google. Advertising and data collection is baked into their OS, store, and core apps. They're just trailing behind revenue-wise by a few years.
https://developer.apple.com/documentation/adsupport/asidenti...
https://www.fool.com/investing/2023/11/19/apple-secret-digit...
Privacy and security from what is the question. From big tech or from criminals and governments that take your device and plug it into cellebrite machines?
I for one prefer to be protected from big tech. Sure GrapheneOS does both, but Apple does not.
iPhone is top-of-the-line as well, because they control the whole software and the whole hardware (starting from basically all the chips). That's very rare in the industry.
There are just a bunch of companies which afford to do the same. Maybe Xiaomi will be the next one.
> I think it's deceptive because people think they will get better privacy/security with a /e/ fairphone when it's actually much worse than an iPhone.
That's just blatantly not true though - even iPhones collect way more telemetry and Ad data than /e/ OSes.
Fairphone makes their fair share of blunders. Software updates are a big issue, especially around the times that critical vulnerabilities need to be patched.
With the hardware I'm not impressed, and on their own forum I've seen plenty of people reporting issues with overheating on the Gen 6. Hopefully kinks have been ironed out on their 6+.
The current CEO also has a persona that would stir up any community (read a few of his AI-gened posts on their blog, if interested of context).
Still holding on to my FP4, but they are not of consideration on my future phone purchase, unless there is some kind of reality check over there and improvements materialize beyond words.
Ultimately, a lot of the “fairness” of the Fairphone is offered by “just buy a really popular manufacturer.”
Everyone and their dog can repair an iPhone because it’s the most popular phone on the planet. Are those repairs accessible to the consumer at home with amateur skills? No, not really. However, newer iPhone models are significantly easier to repair and come along with lower repair costs direct from the manufacturer compared to previous models.
You want years of software updates? Yeah, an iPhone has you covered there, too.
And of course, fairphone’s hardware and OS are nothing to write home about. For the freedom and security nerds they’re better off with GrapheneOS on Pixel or whatever upcoming Motorola phones will support it.
Who is the Fairphone for exactly? Who is buying it and why?
I think the fairbuds are their best product, but I also imagine AirPods Pro 3 are on a whole different level of sound quality, noise cancelation, voice quality/voice isolation, and firmware/software polish.
And let’s be honest about repairability with tiny earbuds: being able to replace the battery is has such a tiny impact on their footprint. If I have to throw out my AirPods Pro 3 every 5 years due to battery degradation, that’s such an insignificant quantity of material being wasted, so it’s probably worth it to get a better product. I could offset my environmental impact by eating a little less beef or riding my bike instead of driving a few times. You drive 30 miles and that’s an entire gallon of refined petroleum product, how much material and energy is used to make one pair of AirPods? I can’t imagine it’s a lot.
I don’t say any of this to be a big corporate or Apple shill. I am rooting for the little guys. But the little guys need to be realistic. You look at products like the Framework 13 Pro and you can actually say, okay, here’s a product with really legitimate benefits over its incumbent competition. There is a reason to buy this product for a certain buyer. I just don’t see that with Fairphone. I can’t think of a customer profile where that person is getting a better ownership experience with Fairphone products.
I'm not big on this general line on argument, but one point in particular:
> And of course, fairphone’s hardware and OS are nothing to write home about. For the freedom and security nerds they’re better off with GrapheneOS on Pixel or whatever upcoming Motorola phones will support it.
For the "freedom nerds", FP is one of the only (if not the only?) vendor to have official support for microG-based operating systems, seamless OTA updates and everything included. The Murena e/OS offering in particular is simple enough that the non-nerds that (perhaps less outspokenly) care about freedom can just pick it up with little change in habits.
I guess that’s true, although we could possibly split that camp into two sides: the folks who believe that Play Store sandboxing is going to be more functional, and the folks who prefer microG are willing to accept the issues that come along with it.
To be fair on either side of that debate, getting a phone that comes with /e/OS installed from the factory is going to be easier than flashing GrapheneOS on a Pixel or LineageOS with microG on another device.
Devices are sold with GrapheneOS installed. Installing it with the web installer is very easy and safe so that's the recommendation for nearly everyone.
> For the "freedom nerds", FP is one of the only (if not the only?) vendor to have official support for microG-based operating systems, seamless OTA updates and everything included.
I am not sure what you are trying to say here. I have never had an Android system that did not have OTA updates. Everything included... I usually like to install the apps I want?
As for microG, I think it's debatable. Is it better to have microG contacting the Google servers or sandboxed Play Services going through a Graphene-powered proxy? And say you have microG going through a Murena proxy (do they do that?), is that significantly better than sandboxed Play Services? At the end of the day, your system is made mostly of code written by Google (AOSP).
> The Murena e/OS offering in particular is simple enough that the non-nerds
Yes, I think it's what makes Murena successful. It's surprisingly simple to install GrapheneOS on a Pixel (you follow a wizard on a Chromium browser and click "next" a bunch of times), but many people are scare just by the idea.
> I am not sure what you are trying to say here. I have never had an Android system that did not have OTA updates. Everything included... I usually like to install the apps I want?
The last bit of my sentence could easily be misread as an enumeration of three things ("microG", "OTA updates", "everything included"), but it was actually an elaboration: FP is the only vendor to support microG, and (in contrast to "unofficial" microG setups) it doesn't require sacrifices in convenience because standard features like OTA updates work just like with your average Android. Perhaps that's clearer?
(Notably "Everything included" does not mean it ships a thousand apps or something. To the contrary, FP stock OS is mostly vanilla Android)
Point being: I could install LineageOS on my last phone, but it was a poorly documented process, updates were a hassle (having to flash through custom recovery for lack of OTA), and I had virtually no confidence in data integrity when running major updates.
> Is it better to have microG contacting the Google servers or sandboxed Play Services going through a Graphene-powered proxy?
How about microG not contacting Google servers at all?
In any case you're presenting an unnecessarily binary argument though. Letting Google handle push notifications is different from using them as your location provider, and both are different from letting all Play Services lose on your system.
> How about microG not contacting Google servers at all?
I already addressed that in my comment, right after the line you quoted.
> Letting Google handle push notifications is different from using them as your location provider, and both are different from letting all Play Services lose on your system.
And what would you say GrapheneOS does of those? Do you know, or do you just assume that GrapheneOS does the worse there?
> I already addressed that in my comment, right after the line you quoted.
Where? You suggested it would go through Murena instead, but you can fully disable third party services by disabling external push providers and by using on-device databases for GPS. e/OS directly offers this configuration during initial setup.
> And what would you say GrapheneOS does of those? Do you know, or do you just assume that GrapheneOS does the worse there?
I'm not necessarily trying to present either as "better" or "worse" since they both have their merits depending what exactly you're after (which I don't feel this is the right time/place to have a detailed rundown of). It was the root comment that posited e/OS was strictly inferior for people who care about freedom.
isn't the main point of Fairphone to not use conflict minerals?
by using FOSS only myself and hating monopolies like Apple etc., i still pretty much convinced that being "green" or "ethical" is more about participating/volunteering/doing-something towards a better world than off-loading your duty to other companies... one could easily make a point that Apple products despite locked down, are still green (Apple has a bunch of zero-emission and whatever policies) and much more if one uses their devices for a long while. i had a 2° hand iPhone SE 1° gen. till 2021? if stuff breaks despite your not being able to fix it's not like you can't hop into a specialized shop to change batteries or even pay the expensive service Apple offers... sure that allows exploitation and it's always nice to get rid of it, that's why somehow these emerging companies are important and/or policies like the right of repair will make them obsolete
I have been wondering and I first got a Fairphone 3+ because I thought, among others, it was "greener".
Then I realised that:
- Fairphone 3 was already "slow" when it was released in 2019
- Fairphone 3+ was pretty much exactly the same hardware, but I bought it 2.5 years later
- My Fairphone 3+ was annoyingly slow from the moment I bought it (I was using it less than a normal phone because of that, and I just completely gave up on using the camera and asked other people to take photos instead).
- My Fairphone 3+ became painfully after 1.5 - 2 years.
I did not change phone because the hardware was not running anymore. I changed because I just couldn't use the few apps I needed because they were unusable (lagging and crashing). I don't mean games: banking apps, weather forecasts, public transports. Pretty much only Signal/WhatsApp were fine (slow, but fine).
So I painfully kept my Fairphone 3+ for a little more than 4 years.
Then I realised that people who buy an iPhone routinely keep it 6-8 years, without it being painful at all. Is it "greener" if I buy one iPhone/Pixel, or 2 Fairphones? I'm not so sure anymore. What I know is that the iPhone/Pixel are not painful to use.
I think your story also points to the idea that business ethics or other tertiary benefits will only sell a product to a limited extent. They help, but the product being fit for its core purpose is still most important.
> For the freedom and security nerds they’re better off with GrapheneOS on Pixel or whatever upcoming Motorola phones will support it.
Not quite. The people who care about security first are better off with GOS, yes. However, GOS's threat model very specifically treats the user as a thing to defend against; the freedom-first crowd should avoid them.
> However, GOS's threat model very specifically treats the user as a thing to defend against
Can you elaborate?
GOS mostly honours the Android security model, which many alternatives don't do (many times they don't have a choice because the device doesn't allow them to relock the bootloader, so they just defeat the whole security model from the moment you install).
There is absolutely nothing that can be done on a Stock Android and that I cannot do on GrapheneOS. Or at least I haven't found it.
Yes, GOS is probably a direct improvement over stock android; I would also describe that as suboptimal from a user freedom perspective. Really, most of my beef with GOS is that its developers strongly object to user-controlled root. On my phone, I can run a backup app, give it root access, and backup/restore any app at will. Or, I can run a file manager with root access and inspect any data in the system. The GOS devs object to this on the grounds that any user-installed app getting root undermines their entire security model (and some other arguments that I'm going to skip because I'm trying to steel-man). And that's actually a perfectly valid argument; handing root access to apps does break their security model, but if the user doesn't have root then I'd contest the idea that the user is in control. And of course there is the fact that I have actual uses for root that GOS doesn't provide. (There are some other variants of this basic tension, like bootloader locking, but I think root is the biggest instance and representative.)
That doesn't come across as steelmanning our position at all but rather the opposite. It omits the most important points.
Providing app accessible root in the OS greatly reduces security without people ever using it. It gives root access to a huge portion of the OS by having it around as a feature even if it's never used. It fundamentally breaks a large portion of the security model for verified boot, which can no longer defend against attackers maintaining privileged access after a compromise
In addition to the inherent reduction in security from providing it, nearly all apps built around using full unconstrained root access don't need anywhere close to that. In nearly all cases, it's used as a shortcut instead of doing things securely. Following the principle of least privilege by only granting the required privileges is a core part of security. For example, an app for managing low-level firewall rules only needs an API for doing so in netd and netd only needs CAP_NET_ADMIN rather than full root. Doing this by giving full root access to a graphical application which is not properly integrated into the standard firewall management is not a secure approach. Giving full root access to a large portion of the rest of the OS in a way that can be hijacked in many attack vectors to make it possible to dynamically grant it makes it a lot worse.
GrapheneOS does have user-accessible root access in userdebug builds. Those aren't the main production builds of the OS but people who believe they know better and want to have it can build, sign and use those instead. Building the OS also gives an opportunity to include safe implementations of features instead of insecure hacks.
Every app can be backed up as part of the baseline. Apps can exclude specific data but are nearly all doing so because that data is a cache or can't be used elsewhere. For example, Signal encrypts their database with the hardware keystore and bypassing them excluding it from backups to back up all the files for it will not result in the data being possible to restore elsewhere.
How about having full access to /data? Or full system backups GrapheneOS still lacks? One might object granting root access to apps, but the device owner should at least have full FS access via adb.
That's available in userdebug builds of GrapheneOS via ADB. A userdebug build can be done with ro.adb.secure=1 to keep the ADB authentication model intact which is disabled in userdebug builds by default for early boot debugging.
> And that's actually a perfectly valid argument; handing root access to apps does break their security model, but if the user doesn't have root then I'd contest the idea that the user is in control.
First, "protecting against an app running with user permissions" does not mean "considering that the human owning the device is malevolent", right?
The idea is that if the human installs a malware, we don't want that malware to own the system. I think it is completely fair, and for most people it is the better deal.
Second, your complaint about GOS is that you want root access, and they don't provide it. You want a feature they don't provide, sure, but that happens. And that's probably a good reason to use an alternative system. But turning "I want feature X" into "if you don't provide the feature I want, then you are not free software" is manipulative IMO. GrapheneOS is as open source as it gets, you can fork it and install it on your Pixel. It is free software. Maybe not the software you want (that's okay, different people have different preferences), but free software nonetheless.
Since we're steelmanning, I would like to add a bit more.
GrapheneOS will never be closed source/proprietary because they believe code freedom (and user freedom by extension) is paramount. They have repeatedly said they don't have the resources to build a ChromeOS-esque firmware authentication and warning flow for ephemeral user-accessible root and support those builds alongside the existing production environment. They have NOT said it is something they have no interest in even discussing. They have also repeatedly said that where the utility is clearly demonstrated and can be architected in a maintainable way, they are open to contributions (and continued maintenance) that properly enable functions that people unnecessarily need to abuse root privileges for.
The main goal of their project is a system that can protect your personal thoughts, associations and memories to the best of its ability (against thieves, attackers, surveillance etc.) while preserving your interaction with the world. Current OSes (including GrapheneOS and iOS) are already far behind where they should be given the wealth of privacy enhancing technology, computer hardware security, systems engineering and OS design knowledge that has existed for decades- so their work is cut out for them and they are putting everything they have into leading the industry. Their hands are already full. For clear use cases the path of least resistance would be to contribute and commit to maintaining features everyone would benefit from.
If it is a feature/function someone understands they would benefit from personally but do not see the value to impose on others, we can circle back to the original fact which is that GrapheneOS is open source and can be bent/built to your will.
Well said. I would say in general there isn't "the best" OS for everyone and never will be, because each OS makes different trade-offs. I for one want primarily what is understood to be "general purpose computer". Other people rightly don't care about that and want a maximum security device, one that even protects users from their own mistakes (of course putting more trust in the makers of the OS). What we should care about is that people have a choice and can get whatever they prefer.
To answer GPs point, I think Fairphone doesn't primarily target either of the two audiences. I think they primarily target the people that care about the ethics of the creation of the hardware. Basically people who would like to minimize the invisible human cost that their phone creates.
The new Sennheiser earbuds have replaceable batteries too so the fairbuds are no longer unique in that regard. I haven't read comparisons on sound quality though
According to FixIt Fairbuds are the best ones for repairability, not just battery: https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Fairphone_Fairbuds
Do you know how the Sennheiser's compare? I'm looking for some for using at the gym, but wanted something I can easily fix if needed.
The Fairbuds are also quite a bit cheaper
And of course, wired headphones still exist as an alternative for those who really don’t like the battery aspect, and it’s not even terribly inconvenient for phones without a headphone jack.
I suspect that the venn diagram of the kind of person who takes issue with Bluetooth audio batteries and the kind of person willing to use wired headphones or prefers them outright has a lot of overlap.
I have an FP4, and when it'll die, I will just buy an iphone. Security updates are slow, and after the bullshit of the android upgrade, yeah but no.
> and after the bullshit of the android upgrade
Fair enough, but note that it does not concern GrapheneOS. Hopefully soon available on Motorola phones :-). That would be my next phone (assuming it's not too expensive of course).
The GOS people really spend a lot of time of energy showing the worst sides of FairPhone to the world. I think it is because the conscientious technology user is really interested in the combination of ethically sourced, repairable hardware and a security and privacy (from big tech) focussed OS. Tbh I also like that sliders to switch to a simple mode. A well, we can’t have it all. I do prefer de-googled + freedom to do what I want over security (to a degree). So… I’m on the fence. As many vocal people are. A second hand pixel 10 is also a “green” choice.
I do have the feeling that many non-nerds can express the difference between all mentioned attributes, many just like FairPhone as an ethical phone. It’s not that simple, I agree.
So I have been on /e/OS on a Fairphone 3+ for 4.5 years. I was really into /e/OS when I got my Fairphone. When it stopped being usable (not because the hardware was not working anymore, just that the apps I want on my phone were lagging so much they were unusable), I looked into alternatives, including GrapheneOS.
And at that point I got quite disappointed by /e/OS, because I felt like their marketing had been abusing me for years. For instance, my Fairphone 3+ was 4 years behind the Fairphone Stock Android on some updates. /e/OS just wasn't forwarding them, they seemingly were just not maintaining the FP3. Though I bought it to /e/OS, under the promise that it would be supported!
Then I realised that all this time, not only my bootloader was unlocked (so the Android security model had been broken from the first day I powered the phone), but the system was signed with the Google test keys! When you are encouraged to install apps "from the internet" instead of the Play Store, on a phone that disabled the security model so that you're not protected against malware as on any Stock Android, would you say it's being a security nerd?
The thing that GrapheneOS keeps repeating and I realised is true is that many times, if you run a deGoogled alternative that is not GrapheneOS, you get worse security than if you were running Stock Android. It's not about "getting the best possible security", it's about getting the baseline. The truth with /e/OS (or LineageOS, which is pretty much what /e/OS ships, I believe?) is that it depends a lot on the phone. And with many phones, you get worse than the baseline you would get with Stock Android.
> I do prefer de-googled + freedom to do what I want over security (to a degree).
So I switched to GrapheneOS on a Pixel, and I feel like I get the best of both worlds: I get the privacy benefits of the sandboxed Play Services, and the better security. And it's not a "weird" system at all: I asked my family to use it and they didn't realise it was not a "normal Android". It is very different from running something like a Linux on mobile, which would be very very different.
> many just like FairPhone as an ethical phone
Yes, why not. If I was to get a Fairphone again, though, I would use the Stock Android.
And I wish Fairphone could get to the level where they can be supported by GrapheneOS. But it feels like my next phone will probably be a Motorola with GrapheneOS rather than a Fairphone.
Thanx for the thoughtful reply. You’re pulling me off the fence.
Seems you have to compromise on HW openness and ethics vs paranoia.
It's paranoia to want ≥ security than an iPhone or stock Pixel?
It depends who you are. If you're Edward Snowden, or even a high ranking politician, it's a sane precaution.
If you're just a rando like me yes, it's paranoia.
GrapheneOS provides massive privacy and security benefits to regular people. That was always important to regular people due to regular devices being nowhere close to good enough to protect people well enough against common threads to their privacy. However, it's far clearer now that exploits have been made so widely available without having expertise. There are many publicly available Android local root exploits on GitHub usable on these devices.
I think it heavily depends. If you are concerned cops or CBP are going to try to take your phone and search it then wanting a phone like GOS is a very reasonable precaution.
Even if you haven't done anything "wrong", you may have engaged in speech or activities that the current US admin has deemed problematic and will try to punish you for if they can find any evidence.
I think this has historically been true and is still approximately true now. But I think in the relatively near future (less than 5 years) there's a really good chance it won't be true anymore.
Once open models catch up to the current frontier in vulnerability exploitation, the cost to target people will go way down. In the past, the cost to hack a random individual person was generally high enough that if there wasn't some special reason to hack you in particular, it wasn't worth it. That may no longer be the case in the near future. The floor of what is acceptable security for the General Public probably needs to rise quite a bit over the next few years.
Why would you assume Google, Apple, and defense-oriented agencies like CISA wouldn't also have access to those same models, but using them to fix issues?
Its just raising the bar across the board, I don't see how only attackers would benefit.
Attackers only need to win once, defenders need to win every time. The game is skewed in favor of the attackers, and AI only exarcebates this.
those who give up freedom for security will end up losing both
The quote wasn't talking about personal security from governments and corporations. You're warping the meaning into a situation where it doesn't fit at all.
Fairphones are closed source hardware with closed source firmware and closed source userspace drivers. Fairphones are less open than Pixels, not more open.
It isn't truly known how a Fairphone compares to an iPhone or Pixel when it comes to environmental impact or fairness to workers. Fairphones are designed and built by T2Mobile since the Fairphone 4. T2Mobile barely has any public information available about it. There isn't information on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of of it. The same applies to the rest of the supply chain. Fairphone provides a list of companies involved in the supply chain without details.
Fairphones are closed source hardware with closed source firmware and closed source userspace drivers. Fairphones are less open than Pixels, not more open.
It isn't truly known how a Fairphone compares to an iPhone or Pixel when it comes to environmental impact or fairness to workers. Fairphones are designed and built by T2Mobile since the Fairphone 4. T2Mobile barely has any public information available about it. There isn't information on the working conditions, pay and other aspects of of it. The same applies to the rest of the supply chain. Fairphone provides a list of companies involved in the supply chain without details.
Pixels are not as close repairable as Fairphones.
iPhones and Pixels have similar replacement parts available and much longer term support. It's harder to replace components but the phones last longer due to better hardware and updates.
> vs paranoia
I really would like to mention that many times, using /e/OS or LineageOS (or the likes) means that you get worse security than Stock Android.
It would be fine to run /e/OS or LineageOS on a Pixel, assuming those Android systems are not too slow with updates (my experience with my /e/OS phone was that they were 4 years behind as compared to Stock Android).
But really, if you have a Pixel, it doesn't really make sense to use something other than GrapheneOS IMO.
So to me it's really:
- GrapheneOS if you can
- Stock Android vs an alternative otherwise
> It would be fine to run /e/OS or LineageOS on a Pixel
Both /e/ and LineageOS lag far behind on current security updates on a Pixel. Neither is based on Android 17 yet which was released in June 2026. Neither has the June 2026 or later Pixel firmware, kernel, driver and HAL patches. Both also roll back the standard security of AOSP but /e/ does so much more than LineageOS.
As you can see at pixel 9 pro's (https://download.lineageos.org/devices/caiman/changes)[los changes], it was updated around Aug 18th (or at least that's when the string bump happened), so although ~2 weeks late (assuming the security patch was released at August 1st, which I'm not sure if it really works this way), it's not as bad as you said. But yeah GOS is probably the better choice for pixels, depending on the user's prefs of course. Btw I noticed similar pattern for other devices that support los, like xiaomi ones.
Your response doesn't address what we said. You linked to a page showing LineageOS had a release in August 2026 which does not show it has shipped all the recent standard Android and Pixel security patches, which it hasn't done.
The latest releases of LineageOS for Pixels do not provide the June 2026 and later updates to the firmware, kernel, drivers and HALs because those have only been provided for Android 17 since it was released and LineageOS isn't yet based on Android 17. Separately from that, since Lineage is still based on Android 16 QPR2 it also doesn't include the many privacy and security patches not backported from Android 17.
Android ships many security patches as part of the QPR2 and yearly releases which are not backported to older releases. The backports to older releases are increasingly incomplete. Years ago, they stopped backporting any Low and Moderate severity patches to older releases and more recently they've been scaling back the amount of High and Critical severity patches which are backported. An official policy announcement was made to OEMs that they'd no longer backport many High and Critical severity patches where an LLM discovered the vulnerability internally due to the large volume of patches.
Pixels move to the latest OS releases and that means the firmware, kernel, driver and HAL code is only provided for those. It's most difficult for the major yearly releases due to the new API level but it's not trivial for QPR1, QPR2 and QPR3 either.
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> It's not like any other device meets their ridiculous standards either
I don't think it's ridiculous to want the ability to relock the bootloader, for instance? Do you realise that if you cannot do that, you just break the whole Android security model right away?
> neither will their own Motorola whenever they get around to actually making it
Source: You made it up
A quick search would basically disprove everything after your first sentence.
It's a reasonable extrapolation of the current state. They want up to date patches, Google is already winding down open support for that, and it'll release in what, a year or two? Basically guaranteed to have outdated security patches on launch or they'll have to start maintaining their own. Might happen, but it seems unlikely they can hack it, as it were.
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There are devices meeting these basic standards right now, and the entire family of them, no less.
GOS are vocal about safety and security of all the devices, not just seriously insecure Fairphones, and this article is about something different altogether, that's misinformation they've been hit with several times.
Fair criticism is fair, but yours is fabrications.
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A problem I see is that GrapheneOS has a history of being extremely blunt about the shortcomings of alternatives, and of course alternatives (and users of alternatives) don't like getting that feeling that maybe they have been compromising on... something.
At least that's how I felt when I starting reading more after a few years of using /e/OS on my Fairphone 3. And the more I read, the more I realised that GrapheneOS was usually technically correct (their communication used to be a different story, but recently I feel like it has become a lot more professional, focusing on the technical side).
Really, the vast majority of technical criticisms I see against GrapheneOS are misinformed. I'm not saying that the commenters purposely say lies. Just that it all is technically non-trivial, and I totally understand that most people don't really understand how the Android security model works, for instance.
All that to say: I don't think that there is hypocrisy on the GrapheneOS side. They are very consistent on what they are trying to do.
Yeah it's hard to argue that their points are technically incorrect, after all this is the mobile ARM ecosystem we're talking about, with buggy ass locked down binary blobs with more security holes than swiss cheese that are never updated, as the industry standard. And in regards to Fairphone, user reviews have generally shown that their disregard for keeping their software updated by far eclipses any gains made by the repairability aspect. And I can sort of respect being brash about pointing the flaws out.
My main source of contention with Graphene is more ideological in the way they've gone about doing something about it: by using the Pixel. To quote that old batman comic meme: "This is the weapon of the enemy. We do not need it. We will not use it." At the end of the day, Google gets $1k or thereabouts for every GrapheneOS install which they can use to further advance the cause of mass surveillance, as an adware firm they have the most misaligned incentives of any manufacturer in existence. The company that is almost too eager to cave to every whim of the fascist in chief in hopes of it benefiting their bottom line. That's what I see as insanely hypocritical. By being this exclusive, it counts as a complete endorsement.
> By being this exclusive, it counts as a complete endorsement
I disagree. The only way they can prove that they can build a good system is to prove it on good hardware, and the Pixels are the only ones that meet the criteria. If GrapheneOS was running on random phones like LineageOS does, with unlocked bootloaders and/or signing with the Google test keys, then GrapheneOS would be no different from LineageOS (and wrappers on top of LineageOS like /e/OS).
Said differently, your complaint about GrapheneOS is the very thing that gives a reason to exist to GrapheneOS.
And I think GrapheneOS is proving its point: more and more users and finally got interest from Motorola. I am quite impressed and I hope it will continue growing and getting more and more interest by other manufacturers.
At the moment there is no other hardware manufacturer making similarly secure android phones.
*NONE*
There is no android hardware coming close. If there is, please name it. As far as I know it's only some unspecified, upcoming Motorola flagships.
If you call the unwilling, pragmatic choice an "intense hypocrisy", it's pretty clear to me you're simply driven by emotions and tribalism, that the facts don't matter.
Are you saying that using Google hardware equals using stock Google os?
You must be a little more.... Coherent with your metaphors :)
> NONE
That's exactly my point. Imagine for a second that there's no Pixel. What would GOS do?
They could either ship nothing at all because suddenly nothing fits their made up standards, or they would have to lower them to fit reality. The standards are there only because the Pixel exists to fit them.
I think it's highly suspicious that they've set their demands up so that only one device fits the bill, if this wasn't FOSS people would be calling up anti-trust and asking how much Google paid them for regulatory capture.
Similarly, if there was a device that's more secure than the Pixel, would GOS support both, or rewise their rules so it only fits whatever they want? I guess we'll see once the Motorola lands.
But no, I'm saying using Google hardware is directly financially supporting the closed ecosystem of corporate control they're trying to fight against. And if we do go down speculation lane, I wouldn't find it impossible for Google to build in their own hardware level backdoors. Given that Snowden is still alive, I suppose it's unlikely, but the conflict of interest is clear as day here.
Huh, that one is funnier than I thought it could be.
There's absolutely no love for Google in the GOS crowd. None at all.
Now quick TL;DR so you can't pretend you missed something:
- It seems that GOS will support the new, secure Motorola flagships from the day 1. There's been an extensive support from vendor and much energy in the GOS team. There's hope Pixels can be abandoned - GOS exists because there's a secure hardware from a vendor that releases all the necessary patches and offers long support. That's the secret. Please suggest the alternative hardware. - Since you claim they “make up standards”, I invite you to list security features that are in your opinion superficial
- - -
LOL, all your suspicions are already answered, probably hundreds of times, starting from the very document you allude you read, https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
And silly as it might be, chances are that all the devices that will fit these requirements will be supported.
>> NONE > That's exactly my point. Imagine for a second that there's no Pixel. What would GOS do?
Or, imagine your family woke up and turns out you never existed, what do they do now?
They develop the OS because there were secure devices they could develop their OS on. If you discuss based on the facts (I have my suspicions), you probably seem a list of the past devices no longer supported, but something they worked on
> They could either ship nothing at all
If there's no pixel they can't ship for pixel
> because suddenly nothing fits their made up standards,
Are you referring to the modest expectations for the mobile devices holding all the personal information and often access to whole live of the owner?
When you're buying a lock or alarm system for your home, what are your expectations? To me it seems you'd settle for the “absolute worst, something that can be bypassed with a butter knife, can't make life of the criminals too hard”
>made up standards,
Which one are made up? I'd like to see which one would you like to go.
- Making patches available quickly? Firmware patches? Frequent AOSP code releases? - 5+ years of updates? Modern Linux kernel? - Isolated radios, hardware secure element with throttling, protecting from attacks known from 90s? - Full verified boot support with A/B slots, rollback protection (so the attacker cannot trivially just flash the ancient, vulnerable firmware), custom keys and relockable bootloader? Absolute bog standard, yet still not provided by MOST android hardware vendors - Or, I don't know, MTE? Disk encryption? Protection for brute forcing disk encryption?
Which ones are “made up”, can you list the exact ones?
>or they would have to lower them to fit reality.
what reality? Vendors that allow, in 2026, to brute force PIN at the full speed? Or those who do not support custom signing keys, so the verified boot cannot be turned on? Or maybe these who do not offer relockable bootloader at all? Or maybe vendors known for delaying critical patches for months or don't offer any patches AT ALL (like one vendor still selling Android 15 devices, 6 months after the release of 17, when it's well known most bugs don't get backported patches)?
Can you give us a list of 2-3 modern devices that should have official GOS support?
>The standards are there only because the Pixel exists to fit them.
And this is a barefaced lie, need to call a spade a spade.
>I think it's highly suspicious that they've set their demands up so that only one device fits the bill,
Also lie, and a lazy one, it's 21 devices today. Oh well, I'll be charitable - maybe you just didn't check.
>if this wasn't FOSS people would be calling up anti-trust and asking how much Google paid them for regulatory capture.
By gods, what regulatory capture :D Do you just smash words together? Can you explain how GOS does, eeee, regulatory capture? :)
Oh, or maybe you're saying GOS forbids anyone from literally forking their repos and building own images?
What is that GOS does that stops you from adapting their releases to your own insecure, unpatched device? I really need some specifics.
>Similarly, if there was a device that's more secure than the Pixel, would GOS support both, or reowise their rules so it only fits whatever they want? I guess we'll see once the Motorola lands.
And this is the passage that tells me you're not discussing in a good faith. Work with Motorola on their flagships (plural) are well advanced, the expectation is they will be supported from the day of the release.
>But no, I'm saying using Google hardware is directly financially supporting the closed ecosystem of corporate control they're trying to fight against.
What? :D OK, so how much of the revenue Google has from the Pixel phone sales and what percentage of their revenue is that (I'm especially curious how it looks like next to ad earnings (direct and admob, etc), Google Cloud and Search.
What is the value of this argument? In % of Google revenue or B USD.
>And if we do go down speculation lane
No, not we, you do.
>I wouldn't find it impossible for Google to build in their own hardware level backdoors.
And THIS precisely is why GrapheneOS standards are so high, so if the crooked engineers or hardware exploits exist, the device still remain as secure as possible.
At this moment we either have to choose between a remote possibility of the highly sophisticated hardware backdoors that might be exploited by a nation state, or a hardware that is so insecure every thief can break into it in minutes.
I know which one I prefer. Which one do you want everyone to prefer? Seeing you're vocally against GOS on pixels, why do you insist on everyone moving to much less devices?
>Given that Snowden is still alive, I suppose it's unlikely,
And now we're at Dan Brown level of suspense
>but the conflict of interest is clear as day here.
Only if you've been staring into the sun for too long.
None of your allegations are new, they've been extensively addressed already.
> it's pretty clear to me you're simply driven by emotions and tribalism, that the facts don't matter.
Hmm I think this is a little unfair. GrapheneOS has technical reasons to support only Pixels, that's true. But those technical reasons are not trivial. Many people don't understand the Android security model, for instance. And if you don't understand it, without being in bad faith it's easy to not understand why it is important.
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Android Open Source Project userspace code runs on any devices with Treble. That means it runs on any certified Android devices with the ability to install another OS. Updates and security features for the Linux kernel, drivers, firmware and hardware are still needed.
Fairphone 5 and earlier have end-of-life Linux kernel branches without security support. Those lag multiple years behind on providing full Android security updates. The 1-2 month delays for partial security backports is compared to the Android security bulletins and is actually a much longer delay compared to when the patches are made available to ship by OEMs.
In theory you can try to do that with Treble but in practice the experience will be horrible, there's not even a functional keyboard nor a functional call manager in there.
And yes all the Linux side of things is still missing.
That's not true. AOSP has a functional keyboard and Dialer app. There are also many third party apps for both available.
Linux does not mean glibc, systemd, Bash, GNU coreutils, Wayland/X11, Pulseaudio/Pipewire, etc. Android distributions are Linux distributions and are not missing what makes it Linux. The same goes for embedded and server Linux distributions without those components.
> they also compare the security to the "Android Open Source Project" as if it's a real thing
It is very much a real thing. You can build AOSP from sources and install it on a phone. Many Android devices run that (e.g. drone controllers).
> Is certainly much better than my Samsung flagship
Oh yeah, that's for sure. To share my experience, in terms of updates for me it has been GrapheneOS >>> Stock Android > /e/OS. I was running LineageOS/Cyanogen a decade ago but I don't remember and it was a different time anyway.
GrapheneOS >>> Stock Android > /e/OS
There are many vendors that are even worse than /e/OS in terms of updates. This is one of several reasons why Play Integrity is a farce, it has very little to do with security when vendors can be months late with critical vulnerabilities and still get to pass Play Integrity.
Basically anything that is not GrapheneOS, Pixel, or Samsung is in a deplorable state (Samsung not only rolls out security patches during the embargo period, they also do QPR2s).
I agree. I was just saying "in my experience". /e/OS and LineageOS support so many phones that it can change a lot.
Fairphone's updates are definitely much worse than recent Samsung flagships. It's the other way around to an extreme. Samsung does monthly security patches for their flagships and includes a large subset of security preview patches. It's not as good as GrapheneOS security preview releases but they're ahead of the Android security bulletins.
Fairphone is 1-2 months behind the Android security bulletins which are themselves 2-4 months behind the security preview patches. Fairphone takes a year to port to a new OS version shortly after launch and then ends up taking increasingly more time.
No you can't, AOSP doesn't even include a functional keyboard not a functional call manager nowadays. And I'm not even talking about the firmware side of things
Sure that might be enough for very basic hardware like your drone controller example but not a phone
Well then you install apps.
You are just reinventing LineageOS here basically, patching the defects of AOSP to make it work on real phones
I am really not sure what you are trying to say. GrapheneOS is AOSP + stuff. LineageOS is AOSP + stuff. Certified Google Android is AOSP + stuff.
What comes from AOSP goes into GrapheneOS, LineageOS and Certified Google Android. So obviously it makes sense to compare them.
It doesn't because AOSP itself is unusable on a modern phone.
It's just a low level technical building block nowadays and everybody is chosing the parts they want.
Comparing your OS to AOSP itself made sense in 2016, it doesn't anymore in 2026.
It make sense to compare the OS between each other, what you can actually install and use on the phone.
Do we agree that the Android security model is baked into AOSP? Or would you say that the Play Services bring the security model to Google-certified Android, GrapheneOS implements its own security model from scratch, and LineageOS as well?
Assuming they share a big part of the security model, how would it "not make sense" to compare them? If AOSP is the baseline, saying that /e/OS is often weakening the security model and GrapheneOS is hardening it is a way to compare them. That makes complete sense to me.
I suppose it's a testament to their success, but, I have a fairphone 3 from almost 6 years now, and I'm a bit annoyed that they're basically "sunsetting it" (no more software updates, no more spare parts.)
My fairphone 2 had lasted 5 years, but was completely unusable at the end. My current phone works very well (again, huge kudos to the team if anyone is reading this), and I would not mind trying to reach the decade with it - but in a few months, someone (my bank, a shop, a 2FA, whatever) will ask for an unsupported android feature.
I know people will give me names of exotic non-android distros, but will they run my bank's app :/ ?
I had a similar experience but with the Fairphone 2. I never swapped out any parts because performance hardware upgrades never became available and it was superseded by the Fairphone 3. I've not invested again in a Fairphone since. I've no interest in paying extra for repairability I'm never going to use since they have the same obsolescence/replacement model as any other phone.
Fairphone 5 are already in a similar situation due to the kernels no longer having security support with no plan to take it over or move to a newer branch. Fairphone's more recent devices are headed to the same situation. The same thing happens with other components beyond the Linux kernel. People are using the devices with the belief they're receiving security support that's not being provided.
My previous phone was an OPPO Find X3 Pro phone. Incredible phone. I only changed it because it has no zoom on the cameras. But I used it for 5 years.
OTOH my OnePlus 5T is more than 9 year old now, and still perfectly usable (I changed the battery once).
Great what they are doing - yet I found Shiftphone to be also fair, equally or better repairable and even more open for alternative Operating Systems. I think Fairphone supports 2 OSes officially, Shiftphone has a whole custom ROM list of ~10.
https://www.shift.eco/en/shiftphone-8/
Ten? So like Android and Linux flavors? I'm not sure I even know of ten: e/OS, Calyx, Lineage, Ubuntu Touch, eh is there like Mobian or something still alive... how do they get to ten?? Do they also all fully work? Camera and calling (and not only on 2G) for example?
I'd be interested in the list, the website you've linked is super sparse (the full menu is like shop, some feel-good pages about device deposit and impact, blog, and contact us - no knowledge base, documentation, or somewhere where you'd expect to find OS info or even downloads)
their marketing is really low-key and they must improve it because they have enticing products. OS offers page: https://www.shift.eco/shiftos/
Okay that's six: the ones I forgot are iodéOS and Postmarket (possibly the most popular Linux mobile, idk how I forgot about them), plus Shift's own custom OS which I'll count as two because there's a googleful and a googleless variant which is a relatively significant change, plus LineageOS and e/OS which I had mentioned. That's a lot of choice indeed! Thanks for the link
SailfishOS is another popular mobile Linux distro you should be aware of - it's been around for a long, long time - in fact its heritage can be traced all the way back to Nokia's Maemo OS (circa 2005), which became famous in the community with the Nokia 900.
And then in 2010, Maemo merged with Intel's Moblin to become MeeGo (featured on the Nokia N9). The MeegGo engineers who were let go (due to Nokia x Microsoft) then created Mer, and eventually started a new company called Jolla, who created SailfishOS based on Mer.
It's been 13 years already since SailfishOS was out, and if you include the Maemo heritage, it makes it the oldest surviving mobile Linux distribution.
That's interesting, is it any farther ahead of the others?
Looks like it has USB3 unlike the Fairphone. How does the SOC/Camera compare?
The recently released Fairphone 6+ runs on Android 16. I had to look that up on Wikipedia, their website doesn't even clearly state that. Android 16 is 14 months old at the moment. Android 17 was released to manufacturers 6 months ago and had a general release 2 months ago.
So why does a brand new phone run an operating system from over a year ago? Does it really take over 6 months to update a phone to a new version of Android?
How am I supposed to believe a company is committing to supporting a phone for a long time when at release it already runs outdated software?
I am a user. What does Android 17 do for me that 16 doesn't?
Security is the big reason to want 17 over 16, though I believe 16 is getting a lot of those features backported still.
Otherwise, I preferred 16. The UX, AI, and all the other garbage I really could do without. I don't love it. My phone (pixel 9) feels slower and the battery is now draining like crazy.
Android 17 is required for full Android security updates. Only a subset of patches are backported to older versions and that's decreasing. Android 17 is also required for the latest and greatest privacy/security protections which are not backported. There have been massive privacy and security improvements in each yearly Android release.
Since about 12 or so, it's been a series of cosmetic changes, bugfixes, and "AI" features.
Android 17 is required for full Android security updates. Only a subset of patches are backported to older versions and that's decreasing. Android 17 is also required for the latest and greatest privacy/security protections which are not backported. There have been massive privacy and security improvements in each yearly Android release. There have also been far more improvements than those. Being unaware of it doesn't mean it hasn't been done.
This is largely untrue.
You would be missing out on:
- Minimum Target SDK Enforcement Blocks installation of apps that target ancient versions of Android and legacy APIs.
- Restricted settings for sideloaded apps
- Null-Cipher rejection and 2G disabling
- Cell Network Surveillence Alerts
- Platform Rust Migration
- Scoped Media
Among many many unpatched Med and Low severity CVEs that don't get backported.
> Minimum Target SDK Enforcement Blocks installation of apps that target ancient versions of Android and legacy APIs.
Funny to list a user-hostile change as the first “improvement” that comes to mind.
I guess GP should have said “series of cosmetic changes, and breaks in your UI habbits and a few of your apps deemed too old”.
Getting security updates for issues that are not marked high/critical. These are not your typical RCE, but they are used in exploit chains.
For those not aware, Android Security Bulletins only cover high/critical vulnerabilities. There are also rumors that Google will soon stop fixing vulnerabilities in not-actual versions that were discovered by Google in LLM-driven vulnerability discovery. There was recently a GrapheneOS thread about it.
> There are also rumors that Google will soon stop fixing vulnerabilities in not-actual versions that were discovered by Google in LLM-driven vulnerability discovery.
These are not rumors. It's an official announcement from Google to OEMs and we have access to it.
> Getting security updates for issues that are not marked high/critical. These are not your typical RCE, but they are used in exploit chains.
Aren't those back-ported for a while?
Android Security Bulletins are a list of the High and Critical severity patches backported to older Android versions. At the time a bulletin is published, the patches have been available to OEMs to ship for 2-4 months. Fairphone is nearly always 1-2 months behind the latest bulletin but it can get much worse over time.
Android Security Bulletins do not cover the vast majority of Linux kernel security patches. They only cover an extremely small subset tied to Android. The Linux kernel has a massive tsunami of security patches on an ongoing basis. Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel without security support. They're close to not updating the kernel at all anymore. Their more recent devices will end up in the same situation.
The Linux kernel is not the only component ending up unmaintained while the devices are still presented as supported.
No, they are not.
https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/114101511604296440
You need new releases or QPRs to get other patches.
Android 17 is required for full Android security updates. Only a subset of patches are backported to older versions and that's decreasing. Android 17 is also required for the latest and greatest privacy/security protections which are not backported. There have been massive privacy and security improvements in each yearly Android release.
16 is fine if you don’t connect your phone to rhe internet, or use sms.
I belive you are mistaken. Android 17 final was "released" 6-7 weeks ago.
But Google being Google, this release is pretty much useless until Samsung et al deal with all bugs and performance issues, which will take 2-4 months.
As a Linux, macOS and Windows user it’s really strange to me that you can’t just install the latest OS on your device. Even my iPhone updates to the latest version as soon as it’s released.
I dont know. Does your Linux distribution immediately upgrade to the latest kernel when Linus releases a new one?
Besides, the phone software is highly optimised for the specific hardware. It is not a generic software like Windows
Even distros often provide a kernel mainline branch to let you install the latest and greatest kernel in a click.
But there's also nothing to stop you simply building the latest kernel from source and using that - it's pretty easy and it will work fine.
> Does your Linux distribution immediately upgrade to the latest kernel when Linus releases a new one?
Yes, it does (CachyOS).
Why though?
Seriously, why can't Android just be installed? Are they building it like the old-timey kernel before modules and embedding drivers in a giant monolith or something ridiculous?
Android is even more modular:
https://source.android.com/docs/core/architecture/hal
Certification takes time and probably overlaped with the phone development. Fairephone is small compared to e.g. samsung and they describe themself more "stable" and long-term support than bleeding edge.
Fairphone 5 and earlier also have end-of-life Linux kernel branches without security support. Fairphone's more recent devices are headed to the same situation. In practice, the same thing happens with other components beyond the Linux kernel.
Fairphones have 1-2 months of delay for partial security backports to older releases from the beginning and much longer delays for full updates. Android 17 is required for full Android security updates. Only a subset of patches are backported to older versions and that subset is decreasing.
Android 17 is also required for the latest and greatest privacy/security protections which are not backported. There have been massive privacy and security improvements in each yearly Android release.
Even worse: Google actually does four releases releases per year (major and QPRs), of which QPR2 is also provided to OEMs. Only Samsung and GrapheneOS roll out QPR2 releases.
The Android version is clearly displayed in the article.
this is 100% in the hands of the SoC manufacturer.
Android versions are locked to kernel versions, which are locked to binary drivers to run your hardware. there's no way around that and you can't reverse engineer or do anything if you want that SoC vendor to continue to fulfill your orders (which you're already at the bottom of the fulfilment list because of low volumes)
Qualcomm provides 8 years of support from platform launch.
Android versions are not locked to kernel versions. In general, new Android versions do not require new kernel versions.
In practice, all kernel drivers are open source including for Snapdragon, Exynos and MediaTek. The kernel drivers can be ported to new major kernel versions regardless of whether the firmware and drivers are still supported. The benefit of updating the kernel and kernel drivers without firmware and userspace driver updates is very low. Rewriting the userspace driver code as open source code on top of the kernel drivers is also entirely possible. It's a lot of work and there's a lack of a security motivation to do it due to needing up-to-date firmware with patches for serious remote vulnerabilities and other issues.
If this were genuinely 100% a Qualcomm limitation, I'd expect every Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 phone to be similarly stuck. But Motorola's Edge 70 Fusion uses the same SoC and was already in Android 17 beta testing in February, and Nothing's Phone (4a) and OnePlus Nord CE 6 are also slated for Android 17. So it seems the SoC isn't inherently preventing Android 17.
it's not that simple
to promise 5 year of security updates your SoC needs to also have that support for that time frame + part of your developmeant/production time (as you can't the last steps of development/production before that chip is released). Lastly you need to add the duration during which you promise the 5 years security updates.
to put it simple for a 5 year guarantee you need ~8 better 10 year support for the SoC, measured from is release date
a lot of phone SoC (which tend to get Android porting priority by their producer) have shorter support. Hence why the fp5 had a SoC from a product line designed for industrial embedded appliances instead of a phone SoC...
but the main reason is likely simpler:
They are relatively small and likely will updated FP5, 6,6+ to Android 16 roughly at the same time to not have to support multiple major Android versions for the same time.
Still as long as Android 15 still gets security this doesn't matter too much. Recent major Android version IMHO often have been more disruptive then helpful. At least for me, but my guess it's this applies widely for the kind of audience which pay more because they plan to actual have the same smartphone in use for more the 3 years ;)
Qualcomm provides 8 years of support from platform launch. OEMs/ODMs need to choose to pay for it. Fairphone doesn't ship proper updates from the beginning due to lagging months behind on incomplete backports and years behind on complete updates.
It's entirely possible to port to a new kernel LTS branch regardless of what the SoC vendor provides, but they don't either way. Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel branch without security support. The Linux kernel is an immensely important part of security on a device against both local, proximity and fully remote attacks. Not having security support for the kernel means the device lacks real ongoing security support.
Android 15 does not receive most privacy/security patches but rather backports of many High and Critical severity patches. Only the latest OS releases receive Low and Moderate severity patches. A growing number of High and Critical severity patches are no longer backported due to how many vulnerabilities are now being discovered.
Still as long as Android 15 still gets security this doesn't matter too much.
It does matter, because Android Security Bulletins only contain fixes for high/critical vulnerabilities. But all the other vulnerabilities can be useful in exploit chains. Add to that that ASBs have a three month embargo, but GrapheneOS and Samsung roll all/some patches out before they are in a security bulletin. So phones like the Fairphone have critical/high CVEs have been known for up to three months for anyone that looks.
but the main reason is likely simpler:
I think the main reason is that they do not do most hardware and software development by themselves, it's done by their Chinese ODM T2Mobile, for which Fairphone is probably just another customer.
Everything is at glacial speed. For instance, Android 16 on FP6 has some IPv6 bugs that breaks WiFi connections after a few minutes for a substantial number of their customers [1]. Six months later, they still haven't been able to properly fix it.
[1] The issues itself is probably not restricted to WiFi, it's that some brands of WiFi routers trigger one or more of the condition. One of which is sending a router advertisement with a lifetime of 0 for the IPv6 prefix used by the network. The connection handling code goes in a state where it misses the next prefix advertisement.
That sounds horrible. I can understand why Apple makes their own chips with the practices that these SoC manufacturers are getting away with.
Perhaps the EU can step in and force these SoC companies to change their way of working so that a user can simply install Android 17 with a few clicks regardless of their hardware (to a point). Like how desktop computers work.
Desktop computers work because Intel and AMD provide support to their chips to Windows and Linux, because these chips are used for desktop and servers, and these OS are what their customers use.
Mobile chips are not used for desktop and servers, not used for Windows and Linux. They are used for Android, and that's a 98% of the market. The customers of the chips (the companies which develop devices on the chips) just don't use Windows or Linux, that's why there's no reason for a chip company to support it.
Android does not use desktop/server firmware, desktop/server bootloader, and even desktop/server stock Linux kernel. They have their own Generic Kernel Image with the Android patches on top, strict Google requirements for the booting and working process, etc.
PC operating systems are supplied by third parties that are not part of the computer manufacturer, motherboard or processor vendor. All component manufacturers must write drivers for Windows, certify them with Microsoft, and make sure that their device works properly ideally on any computer. You, the user, buy (or obtain) a copy of the operating system from the operating system company.
The operating system for a appliance (smartphone) comes with the appliance itself (as a bundle), and is supplied by the appliance manufacturer, not by operating system manufacturer. The manufacturer of electronic components does not need to contact the creators of the operating systems, they write a driver for Android kernel (yes, for Android kernel, with all its wakelock subsystems and such in mind) and gives it to the manufacturer of the appliance directly (and sometimes only supplies hardware, and the driver must be made by the manufacturer of the appliance).
It's inaccurate information. Qualcomm is willing to provide 8 years of support from SoC platform launch. Android also fully supports using a newer userspace on top of an outdated device support platform. Treble provided a very good implementation of it.
Fairphone chose to use T2Mobile as their ODM designing and making their devices. They chose to use the SoC platforms they did. They chose to focus very little on providing updates to the point that the Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life Linux kernel without security support. Fairphone 5 is still presented as supported with many years to come but it's not getting a large portion of the high importance security patches anymore.
SoC vendor (and correcting myself, every componet vendor, such as camera, touch screen, flash controler, etc) must make the drivers available TO YOU to ship to your customers. picking out binary blobs and reusing is what grapheneos does, and ia highly frowned uppon and will get you blacklisted
Anyone have any updates on why this device can’t support or get behind Graphene OS? A repairable and secure phone is my desired option for a phone that’s truely mine and I’m sure this is true for many others also.
From my understanding it’s not there as the Graphene team says that fairphone haven’t taken security hardware seriously and there’s key hardware security features missing that means they are not even interested to look at supporting the device.
Keen for latest updates on this, happy to be corrected.
I believe the GrapheneOS team demands, in particular, a security feature called Memory Tagging Extensions (MTE). This feature has a phone's processor attach a "tag" to each memory location saying what's stored there and requires accesses to that memory to bear a matching tag. Buffer overflow type attacks are effectively prevented because a read into the adjoining region having a different tag gets rejected.
This feature is usually NOT present in desktop computers, and has only really been implemented by the Google Pixel hardware so far. It's unclear why it's viewed as being so critically necessary for Graphene: MTE is certainly useful but I personally wouldn't say its absence indicates an "insecure" device, and it imposes both a clear performance (and battery life!) penalty and a significant hardware burden on the SoC manufacturer. It's a pretty significant trade-off.
Anyway, that's the biggest single reason why GrapheneOS devs say "this hardware is not adequately secure": 99% of phone chips are excluded because they do not support MTE.
While yes I am on GrapheneOS' side on these issues, I'm surprised nobody clones the GrapheneOS repo and simply disables the minimal handful of features which block it from working on devices. Maybe calling the clone CarbonOS? If MTE is required to boot GrapheneOS and Fairphones don't have MTE, then Fairphone clones GrapheneOS and disables MTE for its images. Graphene has so many features beyond just hardware security that other Androids lack, that it would be worthwhile to do this and it would still be higher security than the others (even if it's below GrapheneOS' own full security). Sensor & network permissions, storage & contact scopes, autoreboot, scrambled pin, radio auto-off, MAC address randomization, and more, I'm sure don't require MTE or Titan etc. Just follow GrapheneOS as upstream, making sure that the minimal set of changes needed to get it working on other/older devices transfers with the new updates.
Fairphones are missing many of the required features and don't provide reasonable updates. An incomplete port of GrapheneOS won't provide decent security for users. It won't have decent encryption for the vast majority of users not using a strong passphrase and it won't defend well against exploits. It will end up with an end-of-life kernel and drivers/firmware lagging far behind on updates.
MTE is required for the majority of the additional protection provided by GrapheneOS against memory corruption exploits. Nearly all remote exploits and most local exploits involve memory corruption. MTE is only going to become more important as we implement deeper integration for it.
I think it would just be a lot of work. And if you went down that road, you would be against other teams with bigger marketing and a bigger community.
As in: people who do care enough to understand the technical arguments tend to go for GrapheneOS when they can. But if you build a "degraded GrapheneOS", you are not targetting those. For someone who doesn't care about what GrapheneOS brings, why would they use your system versus /e/OS?
DivestOS was a thing at some point, which was technically very interesting. But there wasn't much of a differentiator since the people who already cared about what DivestOS was doing were probably already looking at getting GrapheneOS.
Lack of MTE is not the only huge reason why the GrapheneOS team refuses most devices. Most vendors' lack of timely bugfixes for device-specific drivers and firmware, and no commitment to keep providing bugfixes for a number of years is another major factor.
Still, a 'degraded' GrapheneOS as my proposed CarbonOS, beats /e/, Lineage, Calyx, and stock. Not doing CarbonOS is throwing the baby (non-hardware hardening and features) out with the bathwater (the lack of hardware hardening). I for one do not wholly rely on Titan and use a long alphanumeric password on my primary profile to ensure BFU disk encryption isn't violated, while living in secondary daily-driver profiles which are PIN protected for ease of use. If I suspect phone seizure becomes a non-infinitesimal possibility, I can just reboot! Additionally, I would love to see an option in GOS that allows me to change the action bound to the panic sequence (5+ rapid presses of power): I would never call police using that sequence, I would 100x rather that sequence cause a shutdown instead. That way if I am asked to hand over my phone I can just panic sequence it as I am removing it from my pocket. As it stands now I would have to pause to interact with the screen to shut it off, significantly increasing the likelihood of the adversary snatching it before I could get it into BFU.
The majority of our added exploit protections are based on hardware security features and that will only be increasing over time. MTE, PAC, BTI, hardware-based blocking of USB connections/data and far more are hardware features used to implement protections in software. MTE is going to be a growing part of how we build memory corruption defenses in the kernel and userspace. Once 6th/7th gen Pixels are end-of-life and we finally flip the switch on using MTE in all user installed apps by default, we can focus even more on expanding MTE-based protections.
The vast majority of users do not use a strong passphrase. The recommended high security setup is a strong passphrase and 2-factor fingerprint+PIN secondary unlock for convenience. Using a weaker PIN for secondary users for convenience is not our recommended approach.
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I have seen inflammatory comments coming from all communities, I wouldn't say it's only GrapheneOS.
Though I haven't seen any of those in a while... as if they all got a lot more professional in their communications suddenly? One can hope.
Your comment, however, seems to wish the inflammatory debates came back, and I don't think it is constructive.
MTE is not the only blocker here. Pixel 7 series do not have it and are currently supported by GrapheneOS. There are other concerns regarding things like a proper secure element implementation and timely firmware/binary blob updates.
GrapheneOS requires MTE for any newly added devices. Pixel 6 and Pixel 7 series devices do not meet the current requirements. Pixel 8 and later are the devices meeting the full requirements.
Devices are supported until end-of-life rather than being dropped when they no longer meet the requirements. Pixel 6 is nearly end-of-life and Pixel 7 will be end-of-life in a bit over a year. Both have 5 years of updates from launch as opposed to 7 years for the Pixel 8 and later.
We want to require 7 years of updates for new devices rather than 5 but have left it at 5 to help budget devices meet our requirements.
Right, but still my CarbonOS idea ('degraded' GrapheneOS) is better than /e/, Lineage, Calyx, and stock. By 'degraded' I mean the minimal changes to current GrapheneOS needed to get it working on a given GrapheneOS-unsupported device.
An incomplete port of GrapheneOS to Fairphones will be missing many of the core security features and won't have reasonable security updates. Fairphones are nowhere close to reasonably secure devices.
Most people expect to have decent encryption without a strong passphrase, at least 5 years of security updates and a lot more. Fairphone says they provide updates far longer than they do for many components, and those come with substantial delays. Fairphone 5 and earlier have end-of-life kernels without security support. That's a very bad situation and is widely ignored. The more recent devices are headed to the same situation for the Linux kernel and other components.
> Most people expect to have decent encryption without a strong passphrase
Citation needed.
That's highly inaccurate information. MTE is included on a large number of smartphones beyond Pixels. It's heavily integrated into iOS on the iPhone 17 as their Memory Integration Enforcement feature. MTE enables massive security improvements against exploits and Pixels have had it since the Pixel 8 in October 2023.
Traditional desktop computers have atrocious privacy and security throughout hardware, firmware and software. That isn't a relevant comparison for GrapheneOS. Recent Mac hardware does support MTE and so will non-Mac devices using Snapdragon chips. Qualcomm has added MTE support for their latest flagship mobile SoC platform and will bring it elsewhere. MediaTek and Exynos have also added MTE support.
MTE does not have the substantial performance or battery life impact you're portraying it as having. It's also far more useful than you're portraying it as being. Apple would not have extensively integrated MTE if they had to give up significant performance or battery life. iPhones have a lot of focus on security but aren't willing to make significant sacrifices in those areas for it, at least for the default settings. Their Memory Integrity Enforcement entirely based on MTE is always enabled in the kernel and the large portion of userspace where they deployed it. It's not only used for Lockdown Mode.
Someone from GrapheneOS was very active in this thread: [0], here is a response the GrapheneOS person links to themselves: [1]
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49344811
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49355122
I've always been a bit curious about Fairphone, but as I only get phones that cost less than $200 (and use them until they physically break), I'll probably never get one.
Still only on my second smartphone, so I'm not worried about producing more e-waste.
Have you considered Pinephone then?
Never heard of that before. A quick search doesn't reveal sufficient documentation to form an opinion. Do you have better resources?
Can't find it for sale in the online shops I usually use (Germany), either.
https://pine64.org/devices/pinephone/
https://pine64.com/product-category/pinephone/https://pine64...
I have one. It's slow but the feeling of owning your hardware is well worth it. Also good software can make it fast, see SXMo.
Your first link, I had found myself, but it doesn't say a lot. Your second link 404s.
https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-with-conve...
Looks like it's still in beta:
> Beta Edition PinePhones are aimed solely at early adopters. More specifically, only intend for these units to find their way into the hands of users with extensive Linux experience.
Also, if you include taxes it's not sub $200. My current phone was about $160 including taxes when I bought it. Looks interesting, though.
> Also, if you include taxes it's not sub $200.
There is a $150 edition: https://pine64.com/product/pinephone-beta-edition-linux-smar...
It is forever in beta, because the company develops no software at all, only provides the hardware. All software is developed by the volunteers.
> Your first link, I had found myself, but it doesn't say a lot.
What does it not say? It also links to this: https://pine64.org/documentation/PinePhone/_full/
Isn't the Pinephone getting super old now? And it was already very slow when it was released...
Yes, but it depends on what you want to do with it. HN is still fast enough on it with Firefox, the terminal works well, too. Good DEs like https://sxmo.org/ are snappy.
EU regulations already mandate that the batteries should be user-replaceable and other parts easily replaceable. The difference between Fairphone and the competition will narrow in the future.
Except for the fact that Samsung is the 800 pounds gorilla in the smartphone space which you'll know will be around for some time. How long is Fairphone going to last? Maybe the founders want to retire early and sell to the highest bidder.
I'd much rather see them running GrapheneOS or /e/OS on it also.
There’s a get-out clause in the law that allows your battery not to be required to be user replaceable if it can last 1,000 cycles while remaining at 80+%. Apple’s phones certainly meet that these days, and I imagine Samsung’s will as well (though I’m not sure if silicon carbide changes that at all).
> There’s a get-out clause in the law
As all too common
GDPR: "legimate interest"
EU261: "exceptional circumstances", no deadlines for paying compensation etc
yes yes, "no law is perfect" etc..nobody could foresee anything...downvote away
> GDPR: "legimate interest"
It doesn't allow spying though. It allows, e.g., to save your session if you intentionally logged in.
That's different setting.
Typical "legitimate interest" section is about sharing data with 40 "trusted partners".
That's just plainly false.
This is illegal.
I have a Fairphone 5, chose that mainly because of repairability. :)
What they are doing is really great in my opinion. I really hope to see more of this in the future!
Are ya'll really repairing your phones? I replace mine when it can't run Google Maps smoothly anymore.
After 4-5 years, on every phone I've ever had, user interactions begin to lag noticeably. Apps launch much more slowly. Intense graphical apps like maps become frustrating to use. At some point I can't take it anymore and replace the phone, long before its physical parts or battery have worn out.
I've bought new a Google Pixel 7a two years ago, paid for it 400 euros. After 1 year I've dropped it, landed on a corner, screen completely broken, replacement costed screen costed me nearly 120 euros (and was not an original screen, otherwise I would have spent more). Just costs much money because of the fucking fingerprint reader under the screen that why couldn't put it in the back of the phone as they did for many years. Broken it again, fuck it I will not repair it again, with the cost of the repair I may as well buy a new phone.
Then I've decided that is worth either spending money on phones whose replacement parts doesn't cost half of the phone itself, or just buying the cheapest Xiaomi or similar chineese brand phone and when it breaks buy a new one or repair it (funny enough cheap phones are more repairable than expensive ones, so I usually repair them).
Look at the cost of a FP screen replacement, 100 €/chf for the FP4. Mine is going black randomly until I reboot the FP4 one to five times.
Genuinely, how do you make your phone so slow? I've been using my s10 for 7 years, and besides the minor crack in the corner of the screen from being dropped, and constantly juggling storage because I hoard media, it works as well as it did when it was new.
I am not sure what you are doing to your phone for it to act like that
I had the same experience. Repeatedly. IMO it's the software, not the hardware. The issues always start/get worse with a big update to Android or the main Google apps.
running the official bloatware (firmware) I presume?
It happened to me when I was using shitty brands like Xiaomi that include a lot of malware and spyware in their official firmwares. Not anymore on grapheneOS (and /e/os on my daughter's phone).
The official firmware, yes, but also Fairphones for years, not Xiaomi or the like (FP2 -> FP3 -> FP5 now). So the "bloat" in question is the Google stuff.
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My family's Pixels have all lasted physically long enough for Google to stop supporting them. My wife was annoyed when I told her she needed a new one because from her perspective there was nothing wrong with her existing one ( lack of security updates is not on her radar.)
I've replaced batteries on Pixel 3 XL and Pixel 6 Pro, both having run GrapheneOS. I use OSMAnd~ with no network permission (except during maps/POI updates). OSMAnd~ shows me where ALPRs are, so I can plan my routes around Flock. :^)
I'm typing this from a Galaxy S10 I got in 2020, with Lineage 22 (Android 15) running on it.
For sure it isn't the snappiest, but my only real performance issue is loading gifs on Signal, which takes several seconds for some reason.
Just tried maps now, actually still fairly fine for me.
No VoLTE on any Samsung phone running non-stock OS is a dealbreaker.
Sent from my Galaxy S10 running LOS
I would love a Fairphone, but no headphone jack is a nonstarter for me. Still blows me away that a company saying they are focused on longevity would get rid of a universal audio interface that we've had for decades. In the article they claim it's to fit other features in, but frankly that's not a believable claim. Other manufacturers manage to get a headphone jack in just fine, without any noticeable downside.
The headphone jack is inside USB-C connector. You can use USB-C-to-3.5mm passive (!) cable to connect your 3.5mm headphones, or you can buy 3.5mm headphones with USB-C audio connection.
There's no additional DAC involved, the analog audio is already on a USB-C pins.
I can't find anything about that in the article or the Fairphone 6 manual. Do you have a source for this?
My main problem with USB-C headphones on my Android phone is how unreliable they are. But if the USB-C port can just pass through an analog audio connection, that should work much better, I expect.
Edit: This feature is apparently deprecated (removed?) in newer versions of the USB spec! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB-C#Analog_Audio_Adapter_Acc...
How do you charge your phone while listening to music?
With a charging input + 3.5mm dongle?
https://ae-pic-a1.aliexpress-media.com/kf/Sfa5566c711b14a4aa...
Going from separate ports to one port, when its easy to yank the headphone cord and ruin the usb-c so now you can't charge your phone is great.
I've tried those dongles and they are all a huge hassle compared to just having a headphone jack built in.
Well yes, I agree, but the option is there.
I think I'd rather stick with a phone that has a separate headpones port.
put this on your music device:
https://images.thalia.media/-/BF2000-2000/939d34e30a3d4f6587...
How is that better than having a dedicated headphones port?
I didn't claim it is better
This is always the question, but who does that?
Me.
I absolutely concour about the need of a headphone jack - I do not buy anything without it. So,
> to fit other features in
what exactly, one would ask. If there are tradeoffs, if would be nice if the customers can decide what to have, in a modular product.
At this point headphones with an usb-c connection have become nearly as common as 3.5mm trs ones. Additionally you can permamently hook a small usb-c dac with 3.5mm trs output to the headphones of your choice.
Only issue is some very cheap ones are actually bluetooth headphones in disguise where the usb-c connection only exist to power the bt recepter inside the headphone. I find this completely stupid.
I tried the "jack to USB-C" in the only product I was forced to that needed it: an unthinkable battery drain.
> If there are tradeoffs, if would be nice if the customers can decide what to have, in a modular product.
A "modular product" has tradeoffs in and of itself (such as size, price, water resistance, …), which presumably would not fly for a majority of customers.
Yes, the water resistance is what keeps my phone from dying if I go for a hike in the rain or a small splashy boat ride, replacing the water damaged motherboard isn't as sustainable as buying a used flagship phone from an earlier time.
Given how severely that hard requirement restricts your available options, I'd suggest adapting to the USB-C audio world. No, it's not as nice as a headphone jack. But it is a relatively small con to just stick an adapter onto the ends of your 3.5mm devices and replace it a few times a year when it breaks. And yes, you can get a "charge and listen at the same time" adapter.
Serial is a universal data interface that we've had for decades. Don't need RS232 on my phone though.
Boy it would be nice however.
On that note, I remember reading how some phones were able to use the headphone jack as a serial debug port, which is pretty neat.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Serial_debugging/Cable_sc...
The Apple 30-pin connector on the iPod and early iPhones had serial!
That is how your car radio could display the name of the current track.
https://theapplewiki.com/wiki/30-pin_Connector
The Fairphone 6+ looks really interesting but I'm not seeing it having the ability to wirelessly charge. I exclusively charge my Pixel 10 XL Pro (25w+) phone on a wireless charger now in the car and at my house and really like it, I don't want to go back to plugging in a USBC cable anymore unless it's an emergency. Am I missing something? Does it support Qi 2?
Was really happy with my FP3 until it died: "sudden death". No power, nothing. According to their own forum, it's a very common problem after a while. Of course there is no warranty and replacing the mainboard is not possible...
> Of course there is no warranty
You always have the right to a minimum 2-year guarantee from the moment you received the goods. However, national rules in your country may give you extra protection.[1]
[1] https://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/consumers/shopping/gua...
Would be neat if Fairphone would build a real compact smartphone, something with 4" or 5" screen. Current device is too large for human pockets and all those protruding camera bumps and buttons are really uncomfortable.
Ethical phone maybe only hardware wise, software wise with Google it is far from ethical
Nobody is suggesting Fairphone has also replaced Google/Android re SW/OS. What they've arguably done I'd improve the existing situation - surely that counts for something?
There is also nothing precluding them from dropping Android in the future and putting effort into something like Sailfish OS.
Fairphone provides very poor updates much worse than iPhone, Pixel, Samsung flagship or many other devices. They lag far behind partial backports of security patches to older releases of Android. They lag a year or more behind full security patches which are not all backported to older Android releases, similarly to iOS. Fairphone 5 and earlier have an end-of-life kernel without security support and the same fate awaits the newer devices.
Unlike AOSP, SailfishOS has a largely closed source user interface and application layer. They still have their own UI and application layer so it's strange to portray Android using a different one than desktop Linux as a problem and a closed source alternative to it as a solution. SailfishOS drastically reduces privacy, security, usability, battery life and app compatibility compared to simply using AOSP. It's not possible to build a project like GrapheneOS on top when so much of the OS code is closed source rather than only many mainstream apps people want to use.
You can run postmarketOS on it, although some features are not supported yet: https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Fairphone_(Gen._6)_(fairp...
Now that Fairphone officially sells phones in the United States, I am likely going to get one specifically because it supports postmarketOS. My Pinephone is so slow that I have never really used it for anything beyond testing.
Why are the comments below flagged/dead?
Reminder that Android is not Linux. The Linux phone experience is completely different from Android. People who utilize distro's like Ubuntu touch or postmarketOS demand that even firmware level binaries are open sourced. GrapheneOS is great, but it's not Linux, and not even close. If we start to confuse the two, we're confronted with the question about Unix, which is shared among both Android and iOS, so you could even say that Android is technically an iPhone. This is obviously wrong but utilizes the same logic as people claiming Android is Linux.
> demand that even firmware level binaries are open sourced.
The hardware and firmware for those devices is closed source. It's strange to claim users demand something which is not the case. GrapheneOS users want open source hardware and firmware too, but it isn't for any of these projects.
Linux is a kernel. Embedded, server and mobile Linux distributions without glibc, gcc, GNU coreutils, systemd, D-Bus, Wayland, Pipewire, etc. are Linux too. Linux is not a specific desktop software stack that's largely used on FreeBSD and elsewhere too. Android Open Source Project and GrapheneOS are Linux distributions.
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I love the phone, but I really hate the "ethical" framing of device repairability. This is an engineering problem and we don't need to twist it through a moral framework.
Phones that are repairable have superior engineering, not superior morality.
It’s both superior engineering-wise and morally. The moral framing is probably more popular with folks that don’t care about engineering superiority, too.
Surely it's morally superior to limit resource use by using things for longer and repairing them when broken. I often use a weak Kantian Imperative that I couch as "if everyone did what you do would it be good, sustainable?" as a _guide_ to moral choice, it's a starting point really, but from that I think moral superiority of more repairable goods follows.
The new $650 Fairphone Gen 6+ is designed both for longevity and easy repairability.
I applaud the concept but to see how well this actually holds up in the real world, let's check the Fairphone web site.
Where are the parts to repair any version prior to Gen 6? I don't see them listed anywhere.
So it would appear that "longevity" is actually pretty limited.
Fairphone 4 (2021) parts: https://www.fairphone.com/shop/category/spare-parts-4?catego...
Fairphone 5 (2023) parts: https://www.fairphone.com/shop/category/spare-parts-4?catego...
Parts for the Fairphone 2 (2015) and Fairphone 3 (2019) aren't available anymore, but I suppose that's not all that surprising after 11 respective 7 years.
Afair, they started running out of some Fairphone 3 spare parts around 2024 and kept the ones they still had for warranty repairs. Source: I own one (and switched to the Fairphone 6 early this year).
Afair, they started running out of some Fairphone 3 spare parts around 2024
So "longevity" is actually about 5 years. Or less if you live in the USA.
https://us.fairphone.com/repairs
presumably longer if they were more popular and repair shops stock up on the parts. I assume most FP users are fairly tech savvy and would just purchase multiple components that are more likely to fail as a just-in-case (much like I do for bearings, headlights, and other small parts for my car)
That's 5 years longer than Apple.
With Apple, you can't repair it yourself, but Apple will repair it for much longer than 5 years.
Not even Fairphone can repair your phone if it's out of parts.
> With Apple, you can't repair it yourself
Generally with Apple, you can: https://support.apple.com/self-service-repair
This is a good point. Ifixit has guides for all the phones, but it reports that none of the replacement parts are actually sold in the United States.
https://www.ifixit.com/Device/Fairphone
Reminds me of the cold steel throwing axe that I bought that specifically has replaceable handles in case you break one. No one actually sells the handles though!
I bought a fair phone 2 when I lived in Germany in 2016. Got a software update when I moved back to Australia. Bricked it. The kernel debug interface has no standard header, and required a fine pitch soldering iron header. I rented a German post box to send it to, as you need a European address for support. I tried to send it twice, and it was refused by German customs. I gave up and now I just buy cheap second hand Motorolas and unlock the bootloader, put lineageos on them. I think giving new life to discarded devices is more ethical anyway.
Didn't they launch only their first device (considering this is the sixth generation) in the USA a few months ago? Hopefully the replacement parts are yet to come. I'm not sure why it's so difficult, perhaps it's that they're stretched too thin and barely managed to get the base device to market there at all
I bought one a few years ago. Good device, too big for my hands (back then, there were still smaller options so I bought one of those smaller ones in second-hand). Not having spare parts available would make me hesitate since that's like 50% of the point (fair sourcing being the other half), but besides that it's a (big) phone like any other
It's in shop --> "all parts" (under the "spare parts" header)
Here are the ones for the fairphone 4: https://www.fairphone.com/shop/category/spare-parts-4?catego...
I however couldn't find the ones for the fairphone 3. The fairphone 4 is from 2021, which is not that old.
So "longevity" is actually about 5 years. Or less if you live in the USA.
Early Fairphones were not necessarily designed for repairability. That is a principle that has emerged significantly in the last few iterations. The FP4 was the first that was really designed and marketed as fully modular from what I remember, and parts are still available.
For the American piece, the FP6 was the first available from OEM in the US.
I still have various spare parts of my fp2: screen, camera, battery. This was in 2015 and it was modular and repairable. For the fp1, it was possible to replace the battery.
The FP 3 was marketed as "you can replace the camera for a better one"
A simple Google search showed they are right here: https://www.fairphone.com/spare-parts
When I had a Fairphone 4, regulars on the community forum repeatedly reminded everyone that repairability was not a primary goal of Fairphone, ethical consumerism was, and any longevity and repairability was secondary or coincidental.
Yes, that goes against most of Fairphone's own advertising, but it was consistent with my experience of the phone and discussions on the forum: security updates frequently so far out of date that some software could not be run, flimsy components inconsistent with advertising (yes, the battery was nominally swappable, but the snaps on the back would break easily, and support would claim that it was not intended to be removed regularly), parts that were frequently out of stock, and of course, whole new phone designs every generation rather than Framework-like component upgrades.
It seems like they may have improved since then, but those problems, along with the atrocious security (FP4 used AOSP's public test signing keys, with publicly-available private keys, for its firmware) and sketchiness around specs, standards and openness (especially for the camera), generally turned me off the company.