Fairphone 4, three month review

So I’ve been using a Fairphone 4 with e/OS instead of Android for the last three months. I have not signed in at all with my Google account and I’m not using the Murena Cloud service either (photo, email, contact, document storage solution). Which is probably a good thing since Murena is experiencing a bit of an outage at the moment. There are a lot of things I like about it and a few that I don’t.

What I like:

• It’s durable. I’m not using a case and I have a glass screen protector on it. I’ve dropped this thing like four times on concrete and besides a scuff on the side and a thin crack on the screen protector it’s fine.
• I love how simple the app launcher is. There is no app drawer and no widgets. Just simple screens you swipe through.

• I love love the Advanced Privacy section. I get a kick out of going in and seeing what it’s blocked.

• I love the privacy score in the App Lounge (it’s version of a play store). I’ve passed on a few apps because I can see what trackers and permissions it requests.
• Managing permissions is a breeze. Nothing is hidden under nested sub menus. Three taps to the permission manager in a nice easy to read list.
• There is a file explorer!

What I don’t like

• Remember how I’m not using a case? The green back gets pretty dirty.
• The photos are… Meh. Not a deal breaker for me and honestly, this could be a bit of a user error thing since I haven’t taken anytime to mess with the settings.
• Some of the stock apps are kinda useless, especially if you aren’t doing the Murena cloud thing and you can’t easily remove them.
• Since I’m not using the App Lounge with a Google Account, I can’t get any paid apps.

The almost deal breaker

Messages using the stock app are inconsistent. I sometimes miss texts and don’t realize it until I reboot my phone. Plus group messages are often acting up. Either it sends my texts individually, like there is no group, or loses them. Plus, the images it sends are super compressed to the point of unusable. I did find a setting to stop the compression… but then they wouldn’t send at all :(

In the end I had to install Google Messages (shudder). Which I could do strangely enough without using my Google Account. It throws out warnings here in there that play services needs to be updated… but so far it is working.

All in all, I’m sticking with it and I’m considering picking up a couple of fairphones for my kids now the e/OS has some parental controls. The message thing is holding me back a bit and I’m not sure how much I’d recommend it. I love the privacy and the right to repair mentality. It just needs a little bit more work to smooth out some rough edges.

Other random notes:

• My banking app, Ally, works just fine.
• Microsoft Authenticator works
• The stock Maps app works fine for navigating (I actually like it more than Google Maps) but it sucks at finding things nearby