Things that make me angry about my current smartphone Samsung Galaxy S21Ultra on a Verizon plan is the mandatory software updates in which they install WITHOUT MY PERMISSION stupid apps like Netflix and addictive gambling games and stacking block games and Candy crush. God knows what else they install without my permission. I don’t want any of it!
Next phone I buy I want to start with a clean slate, I’m not going to affiliate with any conglomerate like Verizon or AT&T or Sprint or T-Mobile etc, I prefer to go rogue somehow,
which smartphone do you recommend that has no bloatware and it’s customizable?
Murena phones are basically Fairphone with /e/OS https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki//e/_(operating_system) with IMHO compare to GrapheneOS.
Their privacy features are really good. It replace Google Services with an open source equivalent. Not sure I can deploy Google applications.
The result is a smartphone mostly degoogled, a good UX and you ‘feel’ the privacy features without being annoyed by them.
EDIT: changed “completely degoogled” to “mostly degoogled”.
The Smartphone is not completely degoogled. Please check before posting such statements. It can not be compared to Graphene. Graphene is far ahead.
See: https://divestos.org/misc/e.txt for a list of issues
/e/ is very slow in terms of security updates and they rely on some google services.
The only point you can make: If you want it easy and you don’t care about security and less google but not degoogled is okay for you, /e/ is your choice.
But please stay away from Fairphone. They have several hardware issues even in more than one generation (for example ghost inputs in 3 and 4) but they do not accept them and try to solve with software update which surprisingly did not work. And if you use /e/ you don’t geht support from FP side.
Thank you for sharing your insights and valuable information. I appreciate the effort you put into your response. However, I sense a potential bias in your answer, particularly concerning the original question posed by the OP.
The OP was seeking advice on a smartphone without bloatware and with a high level of customizability, which I believe is the central focus of the discussion.
While I understand that security updates may be a concern for some users, it’s worth noting that as of the October release notes (https://gitlab.e.foundation/e/os/releases/-/releases/v1.16-s), the integration of security fixes extends up to September.
Regarding support, I recommended the Murena phone, which comes with /e/OS out of the box and is based on the Fairphone + /e/OS combination. It’s important to clarify that Murena is a commercial French company, meaning that support comes from them rather than directly from Fairphone. However, this arrangement offers the benefit of commercial protection, including a 2-year warranty. I also feel a little bit unfair the comment about support, as I think that installing GrapheneOS on any device will probably cut you from support from hardware and you will rely one GrapheneOS, that I’m sure has a very good support, but doesn’t have any obligation to replace the device is a problem occur.
I also want to express my gratitude for the link you provided (https://divestos.org/misc/e.txt). Additionally, based on my personal experience, none of the mentioned bugs have affected me. This could be attributed to my use of the F-Droid store, allowing me to benefit from updates available there as well.
Once again, thank you for your input, and I hope this further clarifies the points discussed. I know that I have a specific usage of my phone, but I think the value of my proposal remains.
One of the main features of Fairphones is that they are easily repairable - it doesn’t look like Murena has done anything to make it easier to fix.
Yes it is the same hardware. Only provided by a company preloaded with /e/OS. It is not easier to repair, it is the same.
They don’t look the same though. I’ve only been to the Murena website and looked at their “phone 2”, that’s not the same hardware as Fairphone.
Edit: okay, I should have scrolled down a bit more. It looks like they made a " Murena Fairphone" too, where they’ve given a Fairphone the Murena treatment.