Using it for a pair years. Very satisfied. Sometimes there are bugs, but they are nothing big. It doesn’t feel like I’m prioritizing away any features.

I don’t know how it is different from android OS though.

Had it on my Fairphone 4 for a while, but was put off by the very iOS look-and-feel. Ditched it on favour of Lineage.

Don’t get attached to phones.

Been using it for few months now a CMF Phone 1 by Nothing https://cmf.tech/en-be/pages/phone-1 thanks to Murena, specifically https://murena.com/shop/smartphones/brand-new/murena-cmf-phone-1/

I could have probably set that up myself but I wanted

• not to be bothered, i.e. buy a phone, put my SIM card on, move on
• financially contribute to the support of deGoogling

and this felt like the most pragmatic compromise.

So far it’s been doing exactly what I wanted, namely :

• make phone calls (duh, it IS a phone after all)
• integrate seamlessly with my Linux setup thanks to KDE Connect (including sending/receiving SMS from my desktop)
• be stable (crashes maybe once a week at most, usually due to specific apps)
• be able to install apps without having any account, neither Google nor Murena
• be able to install apps from F-Droid

so IMHO it’s a great alternative to either iOS (and thus be stuck with US Big Tech with heavy lock down for developer and constant lock-in attempts) or Googled Android (clear no for me) or deGoogled but requiring quite a bit of tinkering.

All in all I spent more time explaining why I liked in online and offline than setting anything up so I’d argue it was well worth the extra 100 EUR to have it installed on hardware that was known to support it well.

PS: few more notes https://fabien.benetou.fr/Tools/Android#MurenaCMFPhone1

Have been using it for about 4 months. I do not game or use a lot of social apps, so here is a mini review, for what its worth.

Very easy to install on a Pixel 7 Disliked the default launcher, Bliss, but it was easy to install alternate launcher. (I installed Kiss, but there are lots of FOSS launchers available) Unable to purchase apps using MicroG, BUT, you can purchase apps on a computer, or other device, then install through the “APP LOUNGE” Audiobook reader and MP3 player work well, as expected. Bluetooh connects to car and other devices as expected. I use Here We Go instead of Google maps. Works well. Default web browser works well. Two different banking apps work well. Default SMS app is very plain, but works well. Signal messenger works as expected. E-mail account @murena.com included, very limited storage with the free tier. Advanced privacy app seems useful. I am only using the block trackers option, which seems to work well. Fake geo-localtion and hide IP accomplished with use of TOR, so slows down internet, but is easily toggled on/off.

Overall, a positive experience for me. Very similar to any Android experience, but with much less invasive ads and less Google.
Things that are important to me work well, and as expected.

I believe CalyxOS is better from a security standpoint than LineageOS and forks (including /e/).
They also support Fairphone.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LineageOS#Forks
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CalyxOS

I’m not fully up to date when it comes to e/os as I haven’t used it before. I believe it would be more private than the default os on fairphone considering google has been stripped out. I’d recommend doing research on the security updates of e/os, as if I’m not mistaken, these can often be significantly behind leaving you vulnerable.

If security updates aren’t quickly implemented, as I think they’re not - I wouldn’t recommended using it.

I’d recommend iodéOS instead of /e/OS as the former is considered a bit more secure than the latter, see overview of Custom ROMs here (summarized from a well known German IT-Security Blog). You can also buy a FP5 with iodé preinstalled.

Oneplus is a bad choice since you can’t lock the bootloader if you flash a custom ROM. If you have to use it, then do it until it breaks. Any custom ROM is better than stock privacy wise.

But with unlocked bootloader there is a security issue.

at very min you want a a phone with custom ROM that can have its bootloader relocked. Oneplus won’t do it, in 2022 they explicitly made this decision. SO fuck them.

It’s been my daily driver on oneplus 6T for the past 2 years and it does the job (of a smartphone).

It’s using the microG services to provide play store apps.

It has fake location, "hide IP address " (VPN), and block app trackers with stats.

The OS updates once a month and requires a reboot.

It has an aurora-like app store to download Google play store apps. I also have fdroid on mine cause I’ve found some updates were lagging in the past.

Overall it’s a good compromise between full google and privacy, it can be cranked up on privacy by disabling microG if that’s your thing.

Some bloat cannot be removed like the notes/gallery apps and whatnot. I’m not a fan of the bliss launcher either, but I got used to it.

The thing that irritates me the most is that some of my apps cannot be added on any wall screen. Like Unciv, subsurface and some other games that I had in grouped apps have been wiped onr day and I can only find them through searching for them, or in the list of apps.

Hope that helps

Yes

I’ve been rocking it on a fairphone 4 for 3-4 years. I pretty heavily modified it to get it where I wanted, but I enjoy doing that kind of thing. App lounge is slow, but I don’t use any proprietary aps so F Droid and Obtainium gets me everything I need.

I’ve had Shelter in the background for proprietary apps. Traveling in particular.

Divestos(and the replacement AXP.OS) or just plain lineageos. Others are just crappy nockoffs. And of course graphene if we can even put it in the same category.