I am writing right now from my degoogled Fairphone 4 running /e/OS.
I would buy again in a heartbeat.
It’s definitely not the most bang for your bucks. But it’s good enough for any use, it already outlived my last 3 phones, and it shows no sign of giving up (even when I was using the Google infested OS a few months back).
I’d recommend it.
People should never trust Apple
They slowed down their iPhones on purpose to encourage people to buy new ones.
I agree that nobody should trust any corpo, including Apple, but there’s nuance to that story that never gets mentioned in these discussions.
Apple used to slow down devices whose batteries were starting to fail, in order to reduce the likelihood that your device suddenly turns off before the battery reads as empty. Simply put, if the battery couldn’t guarantee a certain power output down until empty, they’d throttle the CPU.
The notably scummy part here is that they didn’t tell users, and it wasn’t an option you could change. To make up for it, they had a cheap battery replacement program for several years and informed users about the issue, and I believe it’s optional now?
This was also several years before other manufacturers started offering OS support timelines comparable to Apple’s. Apple still let you update a 6 year old iPhone when others were doing 3 years for flagships. Fairphone of course was an exception.
You should still get a Fairphone if it meets your actual needs or a Pixel if you need GrapheneOS, but if you’re a non technical user who actually can make the most of a flagship, I’d recommend an iPhone over Samsung (just as expensive as Apple and these are the guys who put ads in TV UI nowadays) or Google (questionable stability with the Tensor chips in some iterations) at least. 5 years ago I’d recommend OnePlus, but those days are over. The stock ROM is now ass. I keep my old 7 pro around to play Real Racing 3 and with a custom rom I’m like 3 android versions beyond OEM support and it’s actually super smooth. But I won’t recommend it to a non techy user.
PS: I’m an Apple user, but not a diehard fan boy. I make comments explaining or defending them often because I feel Apple gets way more flak than their competitors who are usually equally scummy.
Does someone have experience with a de-googled Android phone (graphene, /e/, …) for professional use in IT? I need a ton of authenticator apps (Microsoft Authenticator, Oracle Authenticator,…), various VPN apps and privacy-invading ‘security’ apps. Does such stuff typically work without play services and with a custom rom?
In the past I used a custom rom on my private phone and already there it was a bit of hassle to get the banking app running. I’d assume it to be worse with these professional spyware apps. Am I right?
Every thing you said works perfectly fine on my calyxOS FP5. Haven’t tried Oracle Authenticator