My phone is no longer getting updates, so it’s time to buy a new one. The hardware could easily last 1-2 more years but I’d have to replace the battery, which is a pain on my phone.

I’m looking for something that has long firmware support and some good privacy roms while not being worse than my current Oneplus 8 in any way. I don’t care about cameras at all and I’m still mad about the missing headphone jacks, but unfortunately those don’t seem to be coming back and I can survive without one.

So, the options are Fairphone 5 and Pixel 8 from what I found out. The Pixel 8 is a little small for my taste and with 256GB storage it’s more expensive, but it does have grapheneOS, which I’d prefer because the app sandboxing would allow me to have peace of mind even if I have tracking apps sitting on my phone. I could use the proper play store and do IAPs without fiddling with aurora store. I use it already and it isn’t great.

With the Fairphone, I’d get a replacable battery so I can buy a spare and swap instead of charging my phone. I used to do that with the good old S3 and it was great. MicroSD slot is also nice. But the ROM options are CalyxOS and /e/OS. I know Calyx has a nice firewall to keep tracking at bay and /e/OS is an LOS fork mainly focused on getting rid of google from what I know, but neither has as much protection as grapheneOS.

My main goal is to become less dependant on google while still being able to use google maps for my way to work. The traffic aware routing saves me 10 minutes every day so letting google know when I go to work is a fair deal.

So, any opinions or experiences with either? TIA

  • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
    54·
    8 months ago

    bought the Pixel 7A just a couple of weeks before the FP5 was announced. This was dumb

    No it wasn’t. The FP5 will probably never have a decent ROM, only their proprietary stuff filled with tracking. The “fair phone” isn’t that fair when it comes to privacy and software. Install GrapheneOS and enjoy a decent thing.

    I don’t think I have the same privacy needs as you seem to have so I can’t really give any advice on that front. I don’t have adversaries on the nation state or even law enforcement levels so just having control over which non-FOSS is installed is enough to keep me happy.

    Most people don’t either. For me there two very important things: 1) knowing that if someone steals my phone they can’t get to my data and 2) the phone isn’t constantly snitching to someone / calling home / wasting battery on every step I take. From what I see FP’s stock ROM does the opposite in both cases.

      • TCB13@lemmy.worldEnglish
        110·
        8 months ago

        So what? With that you’ve an unsecure phone that doesn’t cover both point above. There’s a reason why there’s so much time and effort invested in GrapheneOS.

        • thisfro@slrpnk.net
          8·
          8 months ago

          For everyone what they need. I’m quite happy with LOS and think it is a “decent ROM”