Deciding between Fairphone 5 and Pixel 8

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

privacybro, (edited )

App Sandboxes in Graphene? can someone tell me about this? is this a new feature?

Templa,

It puts Google Play/Services inside a sandbox so it doesn’t get any priorities and can have permissions revoked like any other app (internet access/storage scopes/etc)

jlow, (edited )

I have a friend who (just like me) has had a FP3, we were both very happy with it. Not sure why but he needed to replace it, got the FP5 but it was to clunky for him. Replaced it with a Pixel with Graphene likes it a lot.

I’d still still perfectly happy with my FP3 running Lineage/MicroG but my SD-card slot seems to be broken and I’m running out of space. I’m getting a FP5 in about a week, let’s see if it’s too clunky for me as well ^__^

jlow,

I don’t trust e (that name 🤦‍♀️) not sure why but they pulled some weird stuff in the beginning that I can’t remember and at least back when I checked years ago they shipped a weird store that got it’s apps from shady apk sites which is a strange move to push on everyday consumers. I hope they changed but …

bernard,

Fairphone should provide you sufficient privacy and security and give you ethical points. I have played with many OS’s. GrapheneOS is hands down the best. I have used it for years. If only it would run on a fairly built device such as Fairphone, it would be stellar.

N4CHEM,

With the Fairphone (…) the ROM options are CalyxOS and /e/OS

Don’t sleep on DivestOS and iodéOS. There’s more OS options for the FairPhone.

Iaitoo,

Have you checked out /e/OS for your oneplus? They do their own version of aurora and f-droid mixed together. Works well!

JeyNessuno,

Is the fairphone’s battery as easily replaceable as old phones were? I’d think that would make waterproofing really difficult

nottheengineer,

Yes and it isn’t rated IPX7 for that reason, just IP55. I wouldn’t hold it under the faucet but it should be perfectly fine for daily use.

Fun fact: It’s still entirely possible to make a phone water resistant even if it has a removable back. Samsung did it in 2014 with the S5. Glass backs are just there to make it easier to break a phone, not for any technical reason.

JeyNessuno, (edited )

Ah nice. I’d have assumed it was replaceable with screws or something, not pop out and replace. This idea of having a phone and two batteries is really interesting and is definitely raising the possibilities I buy a fp5.

Edit: would be even cooler if you could charge the second battery independently.

TheButtonJustSpins, (edited )

Try Petal Maps; might be able to replace Google Maps for you. It also has traffic info.

pkill,

OsmAnd is better since Petal Maps is proprietary.

nottheengineer,

I already have Osmand and while it’s a great offline map, it can’t pick the fastest route for me every single day.

jlow,

Another alternative is OrganicMaps which people seem to like. I can’t stand then colors and it hasn’t as many features but it’s nice otherwise

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