December 13, 2025
The time came when I had to get a new phone. Not that I particularly wanted to, and my Galaxy S10 was still working perfectly fine software-wise, thanks to LineageOS and my device’s maintainer, Linux4. But I left my phone in my pocket for an activity where it shouldn’t have been in my pocket, and by the time I noticed, it was bent beyond repair. For my next phone, I bought a Fairphone 5; read on for what I considered and how I chose. Maybe this post might be useful for others with similar requirements.
My first requirement was that the phone has to run an OS I can control – GrapheneOS, CalyxOS, /e/OS, or LineageOS.
I got a Samsung phone in 2019, but both my stance on technology and Samsung as a company have changed since then, and I won’t be buying a phone from them for the foreseeable future.
Moreover, the amount of crap that comes preloaded on most manufacturers’ stock OSes now is ridiculous, and you can’t uninstall it without messing with pm, only “disable” it (which is probably as effective as doing nothing, otherwise you’d have an actual uninstall option).
Tell me, Samsung, why can’t I uninstall Facebook?
Surely there’s no reason why, since it’s not your product?
I bet it’s because of millions of dollars moving between bank accounts, change my mind.
Second, it must support an SD card. There is no reason not to support SD card storage, other than greed and coercion to get you to pay monthly for cloud storage. Out of principle I refuse to participate in that.
Since GrapheneOS is still only supported on Pixel phones at the time of writing, and no Pixel has an SD card slot (obviously because it’s made by Google who sell cloud storage), that rules it out unfortunately, it would’ve been my first choice. CalyxOS seems like a nice option, but currently has a possibly uncertain future, and releases are paused. /e/OS is based on LineageOS, and to me doesn’t add anything I couldn’t add myself. So I landed on LineageOS.
On the list of supported devices, I opened up the filters and added my list of features (great filter tool by the way, it’s relatively new I think, or at least I don’t remember seeing it before). Recent release date (last two years or so), SD card, eSIM, fingerprint scanner, headphone jack, supports newest LineageOS version, and some other things.
After filtering and comparing similar options, I ended up between Motorola moto G 5G 2024, Sony Xperia 1 V, and Fairphone 5. Comparing the specs more on GSMArena, I excluded Motorola, because it didn’t have an ultrawide camera. I think I would’ve bought the Sony, but I couldn’t find a new one anywhere for sale, only refurbished from third party resellers (and still costing like 700-800 EUR!! For a two year old secondhand phone). Since I wasn’t sure to trust battery life on a two year old device refurbished by a third party, that was off the list.
So I ended up with a Fairphone 5! Too bad for the lack of headphone jack. But ok, it would’ve been nice to have the option, but I haven’t used an AUX or wired headphones that much. And in the end I think Fairphone was a good choice – I like their philosophy and manufacturing approach. Their mission is to produce phones as fairly as possible, with good conditions and fair compensation across their supply chain, and allow you to repair it easily (it has a removable battery! And removable basically everything else). I think that’s honorable in this world of cost cutting and outsourcing to exploited workers in “third-world” countries, so Fairphone is a company I’m happy to support. And they support open source software and make it easy to unlock your bootloader (and re-lock if you install their stock OS), which is a nice bonus. I bought refurbished, because the 256GB storage option wasn’t available as new (probably since Fairphone 6 was recently released), but since it’s refurbished and tested by Fairphone themselves, I didn’t see an issue with it.
First impressions? Well, I’m happy with it so far, after a few days. It doesn’t have wireless charging, but the criticisms of wireless charging are fair and I’m inclined to agree with them, so I don’t mind. After booting into the stock OS once just to see what it’s about (on a cursory look it’s mostly AOSP with a Fairphone app), I installed LineageOS following the LineageOS wiki. Previously I’d used LineageOS for microG, but since standard LineageOS now has signature spoofing enabled for microG, I just installed the standard one and then microG (and microG companion) as user apps. The microG install guide said to install one of the things as a system app for location to work, but for me it works without doing that, your mileage may vary. The phone is fast, the camera works well, I have VoLTE unlike on Samsung.
If I experience issues, I’ll update this post. For now, it’s a very positive endorsement from me.