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Google-Free /e/ OS Is Now Selling Preloaded Phones In the US, Starting At $380 (arstechnica.com) 44

Posted by BeauHD from the welcome-to-the-USA dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: /e/ OS, the "open-source, pro-privacy, and fully degoogled" fork of Android, is coming to Canada and the USA. Of course, you've always been able to download the software in any region, but now (as first spotted by It's Foss News) the e Foundation will start selling preloaded phones in North America. Previously, /e/ only did business in Europe. Like normal, the e Foundation's smartphone strategy is to sell refurbished Samsung devices with /e/ preloaded. In the US, there are only two phones right now: the Galaxy S9 for $379.99 or a Galaxy S9+ for $429.99. North Americans still have reason to be jealous of Europe, where you can get /e/ preloaded on a Fairphone, which is also Europe-exclusive. These Samsung phones are used devices, but the site says the devices have "been checked and reconditioned to be fully working at our partner's facilities." The phones have a one-year warranty and are described as "Good-as-New" with "no surprises." An /e/ device means you'll be getting a fork of Android 10, and for ongoing support, the e Foundation says, "We aim to support with at least 3 years of software updates and security patches."

/e/ OS was founded by Gael Duval, the creator of Mandrake Linux, and the project describes itself as a "non-profit project in the public interest." /e/ is built a lot like a Linux distribution, in that it takes a curated collection of other open source projects, merges them into a single product, and does its best to fill in the remaining gaps. In this case, /e/ is based on LineageOS, the Android community's open source, device-ready version of Google's Android source code. The primary contribution of /e/ is filling in all the gaps left by the lack of Google apps, so there's an /e/ app store, an /e/ cloud storage and account system, and various Google-replacement apps like a Chromium-based browser, a fork of K-9 Mail for email, contacts, search, photos, etc. The company is even trying to build a Google Assistant replacement. Actually getting regular Android apps to run on a forked version of Android is a challenge. Google Play Services is built into many apps for things like push notifications, and there's a good chance that functionality won't work on /e/ OS. These apps will at least run on /e/ OS instead of exiting outright, thanks to the inclusion of MicroG, an open source project that hijacks Google API calls.
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Google-Free /e/ OS Is Now Selling Preloaded Phones In the US, Starting At $380 More

Google-Free /e/ OS Is Now Selling Preloaded Phones In the US, Starting At $380

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  • That someone has been smearing all over their greasy face?

    Big no thanks.

    • I don't mind the face contact, that wipes off pretty easily with a little detergent and alcohol. What bothers me is the fact that basically 99% of phones have been used on the toilet.

    • Refurbished phone that someone has been smearing all over their greasy face?

      Who is to say they didn't replace all the external components and merely keep the PCB and LCD?

    • Re:Refurbished phone (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Excelcia ( 906188 ) <slashdot@excelcia.ca> on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @06:18PM (#61117644) Homepage Journal

      That someone has been smearing all over their greasy face? Big no thanks.

      So, I take it every time you have a glass of milk/water/soda/juice you then throw away the glass? I mean, drinking out of a glass someone has been smearing all over their dirty mouths. Gawd!

      Oh, wait... what happens when someone offers you a glass of something? Do you ask if it's virgin glass? Refuse it otherwise? How does that work in restaurants? Do you take your own glassware?

      That aside, how many people actually hold a phone up to their face to talk any more? If they aren't video chatting they are on speaker phone or a headset.

      • Lots of people prefer disposable drink containers for this reason :) It's not really unusual in the modern era.

        • If you got a glass of water/soda/beer at a restaurant and asked to have it in a disposable plastic cup instead... yeah, that'd be pretty unusual. Ditto for silverware.

    • Re:Refurbished phone (Score:4, Funny)

      by freeze128 ( 544774 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2021 @06:51PM (#61117746)
      Well, you should have thought of that before you sent away all the telephone sanitizers to another planet!

  • I bet they won't sell much at this price.

    • I think I paid $300 last year for a Moto G stylus, brand new and unlocked. It's not a high end phone but it's no slouch, and there are loads of unlocked phones that are way cheaper. Is their some discount that Google bakes into these devices that /e/ can't match, or is a refurbished Samsung Galaxy a very poor value?

      • Well they have to buy the used phones, refurbish/test them, install their software. And they offer a 1 year warranty. They have expenses to cover, I'm not that surprised it's so expensive. Especially since they probably have very low volumes.

        It just doesn't translate in much value for the end customer. You are better installing the software yourself on a supported phone.

        • Yes, but if it can't be done in a way that is competitive then why do it?

          I mean I get it, it's tough to get a business going and to deal with costs versus price. The first mobile device I worked on cost us $600 on the BOM and we sold it for $350. Even at that price consumers complained we were "overpriced". About two years later, and a steady drop in both our cost and retail price, got us into a sub-$200 range and actually turning a small profit* (*ignoring the R&D costs). And a decade later has the dev

          • You have to sell many millions units to make a profit. People don't care if your phone cost $600 to make. If Samsung sells a similar phone for $300, your $350 phone is overpriced.

            • Part of it was the technology we were using (eInk) was still new to the market in the sort of volumes we required. Combine that with we weren't a well established device manufacturer and it was difficult to negotiate any kind of price breaks. Supply chain management and operations is a huge deal in a hardware business, it can break you if you do it wrong.

              • I understand perfectly. I just don't expect any new small player to be able to negotiate as good deals as the Samsungs of this world with suppliers. So you tried something different (eInk) because otherwise it would just have been yet another Android phone, likely with similar specs as anyone else. It was likely a gamble with low chances of breaking up even. But if you did, it could have been the next big thing.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by nadass ( 3963991 )
          They're not in the business of selling hardware -- they're in the business of developing PRIVACY and SECURITY with independence from some of the largest data slurpers for handheld devices (namely, Google). So the value proposition is safety/security/privacy... and for many like-minded business decision makers, this is a rather competitive and rational price point.

          • It comes around back to my original question: If you're not in the business of X, then why do X?

            I think from a marketing stand point it might be justifiable to distribute hardware, even refurbished, in order to maximize user adoption.

            From a consumer stand point, why would I buy it though. The purported privacy and security isn't well understood (yet) by consumers, and it's debatable that /e/ offers such features better than Apple does.

            Very likely they offer better privacy than Google, as they aren't a trill

            • Purchasers will buy these overpriced devices if they believe in the vision, with the expectation that any "profit" enables the project founder to continue software development - an alternative funding model to Patreon etc. c.f. the librem 5 costing several times a pinephone.

              'consumers' like you or I who do, sort of, understand the 'purported privacy and security'. Would I buy one? Hell, no. I'm content with a low-end 2017 era Moto which, at last, recently got LineageOS support.

    • Yes. This is over $100 more than refurbished goes for on Amazon (at least in the US.)

      That said, it's still tempting not to have to mess with flashing.

    • refurb'd S8 in Europe is 289,90€, that's not cheap but I'd expect some markup for providing the "de-Googling". I bought a (googly, refurb'd) S8 for my daughter's xmas present and it's currently the "best phone in the family". Haven't had any complaints. I think i paid around GBP 180 but that was on eBay so it carried a bit of a risk of getting ripped off.

  • The US version of Samsung S9/9+(Snapdragon) has a locked bootloader or did they find a way around that?

  • "The primary contribution of /e/ is filling in all the gaps left by the lack of Google apps, so there's an /e/ app store, an /e/ cloud storage and account system, and various Google-replacement apps like a Chromium-based browser, a fork of K-9 Mail for email, contacts, search, photos, etc."

    I don't know why but I chuckled when I read this. Wouldn't we be trading one set of crap for another?

    • Theoretically one can host one's own backend servers. The main pitch is that microg and /e/ are open source, while Google proprietary gunk running atop AOSP isn't.

  • Running an OS made by the biggest ad network is a terrible idea. If its tendrils can be removed it could be viable.

    • I wanted to ask about this - I remember something from a while back saying that /e/ has some dubious backgrounds/associations and that it's all not as privacy-friendly as they make out.

      Can you or someone elaborate on this? I have lineageOS on my own phone and am always interested to see what others are doing in the space.

  • The goal should be to replace it with true FOSS.

    • As it is usually understood, FOSS means Free or Open Source Software. Which Android is; it's Open Source. At least, the bits you get when you download the source, and not the Play stuff.

      I'm running Android without Play Store (etc.) in the form of LineageOS 17.1, on a Moto X4, and while drab it's usable. I haven't got microg working properly yet, but I haven't actually put any effort into it besides installing some stuff from inside of Magisk. I do however have the must-haves like GPS navigation, Firefox (wi

  • See no point of replacing Google with something else that works just like Google. Instead of a Google account and Google tracking you.. it's drumroll... /e/ ...from what I understand complete with /e/ apps pre-installed that intentionally don't work without an /e/ account and Mozilla crowd sourced location.

    I have no idea who would spend $400 for a USED phone nor why anyone who cares enough to replace the entire OS of their phones and not just silence Google and vendor malware via ADB or magisk would settle

    • See no point of replacing Google with something else that works just like Google. Instead of a Google account and Google tracking you.. it's drumroll... /e/ ...

      Some of us don't like the monopoly that Google, Facebook, etc. have on our digital life, and do find it worthwhile to deal with other entities that can provide comparable services.

      • Some of us don't like the monopoly that Google, Facebook, etc. have on our digital life, and do find it worthwhile to deal with other entities that can provide comparable services.

        This is like saying I don't like Chrome so I'm going to load a different operating system on my computer so I can use Firefox instead.

        There is no reason to load a new OS on an Android phone simply not to use Google and Facebook. You can just not use them and instead use the software and services you want to use. There is no need to load a different operating system simply to accomplish that.

  • Have they got rid of the Samsung Crudware? (Score:3)

    by Gonoff ( 88518 ) on Wednesday March 03, 2021 @05:07AM (#61118876)

    I seem to be in a minority here as I am not hugely distressed by Google spying on me. I have not bought a Samsung phone for a while now because of the garbage they put on. They duplicate a lot of Android functionality, put on yet another voice assistant and suggest that people sign up for their portal that does not seem to do anything that android doesn't do out of the box.

    I suppose I could have bought a Samsung device and immediately wipe it and put on a less messed up version of Android but I buy these things as consumer devices. When I get one, I want it, at least pretend to, do what I want and not what a load of suit wearers want. For example, it was not helpful, way back, when you tried to get me to use your service to store my photoes. Google does it nicely for free. I do not need an additional "app store" and so on.

    Get rid of all the Samsung or whoever crudware and let me then install just the bits I want.

  • I guess it's the new fad to be anti-Google. All the woke are doing it!
  • I live in North America and managed to get one of the Samsung S9 phones shipped over from Europe. It works beautifully. It's basically like running typical Android, but without Google ads and spyware, or OEM bloatware installed. So the power/flexibility of Android without the problems. I've been really enjoying it for about a year.

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