Fairphone 3

[Paul Boddie]

On Wednesday 25. September 2019 15.17.24 Carsten Agger wrote:
>
> Today, inspired by this discussion, I send the following question to
> Fairphone support:
> 
> "I'm interested in buying a Fairphone 3, but I'm not interested in
> getting proprietary Android.
> 
> Is it possible to have the Fairphone 3 shipped with AOSP as the
> Fairphone 1, with no Google apps or Play Store? I'd VERY MUCH prefer it
> that way. I know it's possible to flash it with AOSP myself, but I don't
> find that solution satisfactory."
> 
> I hope they'll answer that it *is* possible, but let's see.

Certainly, Fairphone are improving on multiple fronts, so it isn't quite like 
the completely narrow focus one tends to see in activism (the FSFE included) 
where you get to uphold some of your ethical concerns and compromise on 
everything else.

A few days ago, I wrote about sustainable phones and mentioned the Fairphone 3 
because it appeared in a mainstream review:

http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/community/2019-September/002034.html

Personally, I feel that if people cooperated more, we wouldn't have to 
compromise on our ethics at all, but then this wouldn't let people realise 
their dream of being the big winner who did it all: the "we got this" 
mentality that usually results in unmet expectations and dissatisfaction (and 
a bunch of other people squaring up to show that they know better, inevitably 
making exactly the same mistakes).

On a more constructive note, the Tinkerphones discussion very quickly brought 
up the topic of the German banking sector and restrictive practices on 
hardware that can be used to access banking services:

http://lists.goldelico.com/pipermail/community/2019-September/002035.html

I wonder if there has been any concern expressed in FSFE circles about that.

Paul