this post was submitted on 25 Jun 2025
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This is nice for Europe I guess, and I want to like the fairphone, but unfortunately it's not viable for me.
Besides basic phone features and the ability to run Android apps I have 3 requirements, 2 of which the fairphone fails at. I need it to be usable in the US on my phone carrier. I need to be able to use Google Pay or another mobile payment alternative (that's accepted in most stores). Finally it needs to have at least a 48 hour battery life.
Fairphone unfortunately doesn't work in the US with most carriers, and the one that kills not only it but all the de-googled phones, it doesn't support mobile payment of any kind. I've done a ton of research trying to find some kind of fix for that second point because I'd gladly use something like GrapheneOS if I could, but every time the answer I come to is it's just not possible.
For whatever it's worth I have been using a Fairphone 5 in the US for over a year on T-Mobile.
That too has to to with the fact that all of that is an impenetrable black box. Google gets access, but if your oso isn't Google, amor is rooted, they won't allow you access "for security"
Never mind that the banking web version works fine in any OS including Linux, no safety issues there (nor should there be any) but the app? Yeah, Google only and it's all because of security. Uh huh...
That's certainly part of it, but I'd use any mobile payment app, not just Googles one, but there's basically zero competition there. Some banks apparently had their own mobile payment support briefly, but it seems like just about every single one of them has removed that feature and replaced it with a wrapper around Google Pay.
I've been using the fairphone 4 in the us for almost three years.
Don't worry, it fails in Europe too. I ended up giving away my FP4, because it fails to do even basic stuff like make a call after 3G was switched off in my country.
Worst phone I ever had, with quite a margin. And the only one I ever kept for under 2 years and the only one I replaced while it was still physically ok.