Fairphone 5: Keeping it 10/10? | iFixit News
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Is the Fairphone 5 just a repeat of a proven formula or a real improvement compared to its predecessors?

While they were happy with what the fairphone 4 brought to the table, they seem to like what was changed for the fairphone 5.
What are you guys’ opinions on this? A welcome change? would you get one if your phone died within the next year?

  • @sir_reginaldEnglish
    11•5 months ago

    For starters, you can degoogle Android, you can’t deapple iOS.

    You can replace the manufacturer android with a clean, free software and secure Android ROM, like GrapheneOS. iOS is a black box, fully proprietary and controlled by Apple.

    You can install apps from third parties on Android, like F-Droid. On iOS every app must be approved by Apple.

    You can’t use an iPhone without an Apple account, you can use Android without a Google account.

    Android has multiple profiles support, which comes handy for completely isolating apps from the rest of your phone.

    There’s much, much more. That’s just what came to my mind right now.

    • TherouxSonfeirEnglish
      1•5 months ago

      How can I download apps (not side load) from a store (play store for example) without having a Google account?

      • @sir_reginaldEnglish
        1•5 months ago

        You need a Google account just for the Play Store, given that it’s a Google product.

        You can download apps from other stores just fine: install F-Droid for example, or Amazon which has their own app repository too, and you’ll be able to download and install apps from there. (I don’t recommend using Amazon, it’s just an example)

        For apps on the Play Store, you can use Aurora Store which proxies the Google Store and does not require a Google account.

        • TherouxSonfeirEnglish
          1•5 months ago

          And you can prove that the binaries I receive are the binaries from the developer?

          • @sir_reginaldEnglish
            3•5 months ago

            F-Droid has reproducible builds, so definitely yes. You can even check the exact code used to build every app on F-Droid.

            The rest of stores, it depends. Every store has their own policy and the only one I recommend is using F-Droid or downloading directly from the devs’ website or Github repo. There’s an app to automate this process for updates too, so it’s actually a quite good method.