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posted by Fnord666 on Friday March 05 2021, @07:03PM   Printer-friendly
from the now-with-100%-less-Google dept.

Google-free /e/ OS is now selling preloaded phones in the US, starting at $380:

/e/ OS, the "open-source, pro-privacy, and fully degoogled" fork of Android, is coming to Canada and the USA. Of course, you've always been able to download the software in any region, but now (as first spotted by It's Foss News) the e Foundation will start selling preloaded phones in North America. Previously, /e/ only did business in Europe.

Like normal, the e Foundation's smartphone strategy is to sell refurbished Samsung devices with /e/ preloaded. In the US, there are only two phones right now: the Galaxy S9 for $379.99 or a Galaxy S9+ for $429.99. North Americans still have reason to be jealous of Europe, where you can get /e/ preloaded on a Fairphone, which is also Europe-exclusive.

[...] Actually getting regular Android apps to run on a forked version of Android is a challenge. Google Play Services is built into many apps for things like push notifications, and there's a good chance that functionality won't work on /e/ OS. These apps will at least run on /e/ OS instead of exiting outright, thanks to the inclusion of MicroG, an open source project that hijacks Google API calls.

[...] There's a chance you don't have to actually buy a phone to run /e/ OS. Just like with Lineage, you can install the OS at home, for free, if you have a compatible device. There are 138 devices officially supported by /e/ OS (oddly no up-to-date builds for Pixel phones, which are probably the most popular unlocked devices), although only about 60 are on the latest version. There is even an "Easy Installer" for some Samsung Exynos devices.


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  • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 05 2021, @07:22PM (4 children)

    by krishnoid (1156) on Friday March 05 2021, @07:22PM (#1120479)

    Android already provides a lot of flexibility to load and configure the apps you want. Are there options to load Android (or anything else) or go vendor-free for iPhones or Windows phones, or pretty much any other greasepad phone? That would open up the used market a *lot*.

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  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday March 05 2021, @10:17PM (3 children)

    by Thexalon (636) on Friday March 05 2021, @10:17PM (#1120562)

    One reason this matters: Android phones, even Androids doing nothing at all, "phone home" more often than just about anything else, which means Google uses its extensive involvement in Android to spy on its users. An open-source model that doesn't do that is a nice improvement even for people with Androids now.

    --
    The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
    • (Score: 2) by krishnoid on Friday March 05 2021, @11:07PM (2 children)

      by krishnoid (1156) on Friday March 05 2021, @11:07PM (#1120580)

      No reason not to believe you, but more than *Windows* phones would? That would be pretty impressive.

      • (Score: 3, Informative) by coolgopher on Friday March 05 2021, @11:12PM

        by coolgopher (1157) on Friday March 05 2021, @11:12PM (#1120586)

        Last time I checked the chatter from my (now very much end-of-life) Windows Phone, it seemed to do very little untoward.

        The "do no evil" company really has worked hard to overtake the "evil empire"...

      • (Score: 4, Informative) by Thexalon on Saturday March 06 2021, @02:50AM

        by Thexalon (636) on Saturday March 06 2021, @02:50AM (#1120661)

        Details on what Google is polling can be found in a report by a Vanderbilt University Team [digitalcontentnext.org].

        --
        The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.