Leaving big tech behind: Murena’s /e/OS on the Fairphone 5

There are so many ecological, environmental, and climate problems and disasters taking place all over the world that it’s sometimes hard to see the burning forests through the charred tree stumps. As at best middle-income individuals living in this corporate line-must-go-up hellscape, there’s only so much we can do turn the rising tides of fascism and leave at least a semblance of a livable world for our children and grandchildren. Of course, the most elementary thing we can do is not vote for science-denying death cults who believe everything is some non-existent entity’s grand plan, but other than that, what’s really our impact if we drive a little less or use paper straws, when some wealthy robber baron flying his private jet to Florida to kiss the gaudy gold ring to signal his obedience does more damage to our world in one flight than we do in a year of driving to our underpaid, expendable job?

Income, financial, health, and other circumstances allowing, all we can do are the little things to make ourselves feel better, usually in areas in which we are knowledgeable. In technology, it might seem like there’s not a whole lot we can do, but actually there’s quite a few steps we can take. One of the biggest things you, as an individual knowledgeable about and interested in tech, can do to give the elite and ruling class the finger is to move away from big tech, their products, and their services – no more Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, or Amazon. This is often a long, tedious, and difficult process, as most of us will discover that we rely on a lot more big tech products than we initially thought. It’s like an onion that looks shiny and tasty on the outside, but is rotting from the inside – the more layers you peel away, the dirtier and nastier it gets.

Also you start crying.

I’ve been in the process of eradicating as much of big tech out of my life for a long time now. Since four or five years ago, all my desktop and laptop PCs run Linux, from my dual-Xeon workstation to my high-end gaming PC (ignore that spare parts PC that runs Windows just for League of Legends. That stupid game is my guilty pleasure and I will not give it up), from my XPS 13 laptop to my little Home Assistant thin client. I’ve never ordered a single thing from Amazon and have no Prime subscription or whatever it is, so that one was a freebie. Apple I banished from my life long ago, so that’s another freebie. Sadly, that other device most of us carry with us remained solidly in the big tech camp, as I’ve been using an Android phone for a long time, filled to the brim with Google products, applications, and services. There really isn’t a viable alternative to the Android and iOS duopoly.

Or is there?

Well, in a roundabout way, there is an alternative to iOS and Google’s Android. You can’t do much to take the Apple out of an iPhone, but there’s a lot you can do to take the Google out of an Android phone. Unless or until an independent third platform ever manages to take serious hold – godspeed, our saviour – de-Googled Android, as it’s called, is your best bet at having a fully functional, modern smartphone that’s as free from big tech as you want it to be, without leaving you with a barely usable, barebones experience. While you can install a de-Googled ROM yourself, as there’s countless to choose from, this is not an option for everyone, since not everyone has the skills, time, and/or supported devices to do so.

Murena, Fairphone, and sustainable mining

This is where Murena comes in. Murena is a French company – founded by Gaël Duval, of Mandrake Linux fame – that develops /e/OS, a de-Googled Android using microG (which Murena also supports financially), which it makes available for anyone to install on supported devices, while also selling various devices with /e/OS preinstalled. Murena goes one step further, however, by also offering something called Murena Workspace – a branded Nextcloud offering that works seamlessly with /e/OS. In other words, if you buy an /e/OS smartphone from Murena, you get the complete package of smartphone, mobile operating system, and cloud services that’s very similar to buying a regular Android phone or an iPhone.

To help me test this complete package of smartphone, de-Googled Android, and cloud services, Murena loaned me a Fairphone 5 with /e/OS preinstalled, and while this article mostly focuses on the /e/OS experience, we should first talk a little bit about the relationship between Murena and Fairphone. Murena and Fairphone are partners, and Murena has been selling /e/OS Fairphones for a while now. Most of us will be familiar with Fairphone – it’s a Dutch company focused on designing and selling smartphones and related accessories that are are user-repairable and long-lasting, while also trying everything within their power to give full insight into their supply chain.

This is important, because every smartphone contains quite a few materials that are unsustainably mined. Many mines are destructive to the environment, have horrible working conditions, or even sink as low as employing children. Even companies priding themselves on being environmentally responsible and sustainable, like Apple, are guilty of partaking in and propping up such mining endeavours. As consumers, there isn’t much we can do – the network of supply chains involved in making a smartphone is incredibly complex and opaque, and there’s basically nothing normal people can do to really fully know on whose underpaid or even underage shoulders their smartphone is built.

This holiday season, Murena and Fairphone are collaborating on exactly this issue of the conditions in mines used to acquire the metals and minerals in our phones. Instead of offering big discounts (that barely eat into margins and often follow sharp price increases right before the holidays), Murena and Fairphone will donate €40 of every Fairphone sold through Murena to a Fairmined-certified Alliance for Responsible Mining (ARM) project in Colombia; more specifically, the Iquira mine in Huila, an agromining cooperative that has achieved stellar results in responsible, sustainable, and safe mining.

Will buying a Fairphone with /e/OS like this change the world overnight? Will that €40 going to a few miners in Colombia instead of Apple’s or Google’s offshore effectively tax-exempt bank accounts have a material impact for the Pacific island nations on the verge of flooding permanently? Will it stop the endless forest fires in California? Will it stop the ongoing genocide in Ukraine? Will it prevent the utter destruction of what little nature is left in The Netherlands at the hands of industrial farming megacorps poisoning the soil and water with nitrogen and ammonia? No, but it will make you feel better, and give the finger to big tech, in one single purchase.

/e/OS: annoying to type, but great to use

If you have little to no experience with Android without Google, you might be worried about what you’re giving up, if things will work properly, or if it’s some sort of massive sea change from what you’re used to. The answer is simple: using a de-Googled Android device is an entirely boring affair in that it’s almost identical to using a regular Android device, except with Google’s products and services being optional, rather than mandatory. While nothing from Google comes preinstalled, that doesn’t mean you can’t choose to selectively install a few products or services from Google you’d still like to use, for instance because you’re not ready yet to move to an alternative, or because friends and family would really like you to stay on Google Meet or whatever (I’m sure those people exist).

Do you want to keep using Google Photos? No problem, just install it and it works just fine, exactly like you’re used to. Have a particular fondness for the official Gmail application? Works like normal. And so on. Buying a de-Googled /e/OS device does not have to be a clean break from everything Google; what it really does is give you the choice to use certain Google products, as opposed to regular Android which forces a whole slew of Google products and services down your throat because they come preinstalled thanks to agreements between Google and OEMs.

De-Googling goes much further than just removing Google’s applications. /e/OS also replaces various core services with privacy-respecting and open source ones, like using HERE’s geolocation services instead of Google’s, not using Google’s servers for things like connectivity checks and NTP, replacing Google Search with a custom SearX-based search engine, and much more that most people probably never think about.

Despite – or because of? – these changes, /e/OS is fully functional out of the box as a modern smartphone, including non-Google replacements for essentials like SMS, browsing, contacts, the phone dialer, and so on. Through Murena Workspace, you also get things like contacts sync, an online drive, calendar functionality, and so on – all privacy-focused, of course, so no data harvesting. The free package offers limited storage, of course, so if you want to make considerable use of it you do need to pay up, but the prices are very reasonable. On top of that, it’s just Nextcloud, so you can self-host the whole thing too if you want to.

Installing applications is also a rather uneventful affair. /e/OS comes with App Lounge, /e/OS’ own application store frontend that provides access to the Play Store, F-droid, and a set of progressive web apps. While you can sign into the Play Store to gain access to applications you already own, App Lounge also provides completely anonymous access to the Play Store. In other words, you have access to the same applications as you would have on Google Android, and they’re installed and updated in pretty much the same way. If you know how to find and install applications on Google Android, you know how to find and install applications on /e/OS. And if you don’t like the App Lounge’s interface, you can install an alternative like Aurora Store.

While a lot of things work without issues, there are still limitations to using de-Googled Android. /e/OS makes use of microG, an open source implementation of various proprietary parts of the Google Play Services, and while compatibility is very good and most people will get by without ever running into issues, there are still some limitations. Basically, anything that relies too heavily on Google Play Services runs the risk of not working, and in my case, that meant I ran into a few issues. Both of my smartwatches’ companion applications, for the Pixel Watch 2 and the Samsung Galaxy Watch 4 Classic, would not work, meaning I couldn’t pair and use them with /e/OS. Out of all my usual Android applications, only one didn’t work: the eBay application. It loads the UI, but then perpetually tries and fails to load the content.

Another major limitation that might be a dealbreaker for some is the fact that buying Play Store applications, as well as in-application purchases in Play Store applications, do not work. There are some workarounds, but this is an important limitation you should be aware of before jumping in, and thankfully, Murena makes no secret of it, and states it upfront to make potential buyers aware of it.

There are also limitations that have nothing to do with Google Play Services, that are of a more structural nature and most likely can’t be addressed by further improvements to microG. One example of this is support for RCS – the Rich Communication Standard – that’s become Google’s default messaging service, and was recently embraced by Apple for the iPhone, too. Due to a variety of reasons not everybody seems to fully understand, getting RCS to work using microG without approval from Google and/or the carriers seems very unlikely, since RCS is not an open standard or open source. Using Google Pay’s tap-to-pay functionality in stores using NFC is also not going to work, since it requires Google’s blessing, which seems highly unlikely to be given (unless the EU forces them to, I guess).

A major concern for most people interested in switching to de-Googled Android is banking. This one’s really a very mixed bag, and depends entirely on whatever your bank decides to do. For me here in Sweden all my banking and national ID applications work without any issues, and while that seems to be the case for most countries, there are also some banks who will simply block any phone that isn’t running a fully stock Android from Google or one of the main OEMs. There’s a list on the /e/OS forums keeping track of various countries’ banking applications, so be sure to check that list and search the web to confirm whether or not your banking application works properly. This is another case where at least us EU citizens can perhaps look to the EU for a more permanent solution.

Conclusion

All in all though, I was quite surprised by how well /e/OS actually works out of the box. I expected many more applications to be unavailable or broken, but after a few weeks I was pleasantly surprised to realise that I wasn’t really missing Google’s version of Android on my Pixel 8 Pro at all. After the initial setup and excitement of no longer being tied to Google through my smartphone had worn off, I was left with a capable, solid, and entirely uneventful Android experience, including regular updates and security fixes.

At the same time, I don’t want to create the false impression that everything just works flawlessly, and as I detailed, there simply will be things that don’t work due to microG not supporting every Google Play Services API, or because of strict restrictions some applications enforce with regards to which devices they will run on. Before you make the jump from Google Android to /e/OS, I strongly advise you to take stock of which applications (and possibly, third party devices like a smart watch you might own) you truly rely on and which have no alternatives, and spend an evening searching the web and the Murena forums to figure out if there’s anything that doesn’t work and that you truly can’t live without. On top of that, also be sure to peruse the long list of support documents from Murena about /e/OS, just to be on the safe side.

I found /e/OS to be immensely impressive, and it highlighted for me that it’s definitely possible to have a smartphone that’s not tied to either Google or Apple. As such, in recent weeks, I have moved my Pixel 8 Pro away from Google’s Android to a de-Googled version of Android, while also removing a whole slew of other Google services and products from my life. If you want to do the same, a Fairphone 5 running /e/OS is an excellent starting point, especially right now when through buying one, you’re also helping some nice people in Colombia operate a sustainable, cooperative gold mine.

Neither will change the world, but they will make you feel better about yourself, while giving the finger to big tech. Seems like a great deal to me.