May 13, 2023

Custom ROMs for Fairphone 4

I bought a new Phone - it is a Fairphone 4, 8GB RAM / 256GB Flash. This is especially cool, as this phone does not have artificial hurdles needed to flash a custom operation system and it is widely support in various custom ROMs, for example mobian and ubuntu touch.

Mobian

tested: mobian-sm7225-phosh-20230507

Mobian is based on Debian and uses Phosh. Unfortunatley, the device died turn on the screen on boot but did not show anything and rebooted after a while

Ubuntu Touch

Ubuntu Touch is installed with UBPorts installer (ubports-installer_0.10.0_linux_amd64.deb) which did a lot of easy configuration. Yet, the device had a screen with installing system update rebooted, and did not boot successfully and did retry it 3 times before turning off. I tested this with “stable” and devel channel of Ubuntu Touch, neither of them worked.

This is a real pity, as I would have liked to test Convergence - which is the Desktop mode feature - connecting the device to a docking station and using it directly as a desktop

PostmarketOS - phosh

Installation worked fine using ubports. Phosh is really nice for a newly developed smartphone os, but I would not use it due to the lack of convenience gestures and support. The PostmarketOS on Fairphone 4 does not have working Camera, Sound and Battery status, but thats just a device problem. The installation starts with a default password (147147) which is quite unintuitive and is not mentioned anywhere I looked. When I opened the GNOME Sound Testing dialog, I could only close it by closing the app. When using the software center, I could not even close a modal dialog there by closing the app, which is quite unfortunate. Automatic screen rotation does not work yet, Wifi works, Firefox works. Fingerprint sensor does not work either of course.

The look is great, but the touch does not feel like it does what is expected all the time. You have to use the UI buttons to go back and can’t use gestures for it.

When in Landscape mode, you can’t enter the PIN correctly, because the screen is not resized correctly. On reboot, I had a stacktrace and unusable login prompt for 5 seconds before it did actually reboot (not unusual to show boot/shutdown information, but quite unusual for a mobile phone). The error was failed to load a630_sqe.fw (which seems to be a fairphone3 related file)

  • lsblk shows 6 devices (sda - sdf)

  • df shows correct storage usage

  • updates come from apk (as on alpine) - i could not bring the software center to show available apps

  • sudo password is userpassword

  • convergence does not detect my DELL Docking station (while default /e/OS did and work okaish with it)

So all in all it is very nice project but not as close to be used as a daily driver than I thought.

PostmarketOS - KDE

The usability is a lot better with gestures and handling, even though KDE just has a lot of configuration options - yet I could not really use the OS due to the same device compatibility problems. Long pressing power button shows a nice menu, rebooting did not work when connected via usb to my laptop.

Problems after Ubuntu

The sensors did not work in Android after having Ubuntu installed on the phone. This issue is described here: https://forum.fairphone.com/t/solved-phone-sensors-stopped-working-after-installing-experimental-image-ubuntu/87942

The solution includes the following steps:

  • install magisk
  • patch using latest kernel
  • adb shell
  • su
  • restorecon -FR /mnt/vendor/persist
  • reboot

IodeOS

tested version: fairphone_iode-4.1-20230401-FP4-fastboot

Does have a very nice Firewall app No good camera app Android 13

CalyxOS 4.9

tested version: calyxos_FP4-factory-23409000

  • good camera app
  • nothing special, Android 13
  • not that privacy focused as iode os

/e/OS a.k.a. Murena

tested version: e-1.10-s-20230412278810-stable-FP4

easy installation of Nextcloud provider and stuff

  • no backup
  • no migration app
  • bad default camera app

Sailfish OS

Unfortunately, Sailfish OS is not officially available yet for the Fairphone 4, which is why I did not test it.

Summary

I settled with IodeOS which works very good and does allow a usable App drawer without additional configuration. It does not have the nice Nextcloud and Dav integration from the beginning but I do not mind installing a few additional apps myself, as Nextcloud also has a very neat single sign on method. The Fairphone 4 is quite good, the Developer Desktop mode is as good as on every other Android phone in development mode. I really hope, that this will improve (support multi windows, better suppport of different apps, better mouse support). I do miss a proper notification LED and double-tap-to-wake but thats just a minor issue.

Another issue is the missing timelapse and night mode features the default Fairphone Camera app has. This can’t be added with user apps, as the Camera2 API does not expose such features. Instead, a new open-source system app has to be developed for such needs. As I do not use the phone as a camera very often this is fine for me.

App List

I want to provide a list of android apps I am currently using on my phone:

  • AirGuard (checks presence of AirTags)
  • andOTP (TOTP app)
  • KeepassDX (Keepass Client)
  • AntennaPod (podcast app)
  • BinaryEye (feature-rich QR scanner)
  • Simple Calendar (has much better views than default Calendar or Etar)
  • CurrentWidget (shows the charging speed in mA)
  • DAVx5 (synchronize caldav/carddav)
  • ICSx5 (synchronize web calendar)
  • Element (Matrix chat client - bridges slack for me)
  • Telegram FOSS
  • Signal
  • F-Droid
  • Simple Gallery
  • Home Assistant
  • KDE Connect (for Gnome Connect)
  • Nextcloud Apps
    • Nextcloud
    • Moneybuster
    • News
    • Notes
    • Phonetrack
  • StreetComplete (contribute to OSM)
  • VLC
  • Wireguard
  • Easer (to restart the wireguard vpn daily to re-resolve DNS)
  • OpenKeyChain
  • PEP (K9-Mail Fork)
  • Öffi (public transport)
  • NewPipe (YouTube Client)
  • Kore (Kodi Remote)
  • Linphone (SIP Client)

Some analysis apps:

  • Tuner
  • GPS Test
  • WifiAnalyzer
  • NFSee
  • PassAndroid
  • RustDesk

Proprietary apps from AuroraStore:

  • Discord
  • Fuelio (manage car and fuel expenses)
  • GLS mBank Online
  • SecureGo plus
  • Kleinanzeigen
  • Magic Earth App (preinstalled on /e/OS and Iode)

I really like that I only have a few proprietary apps left and found very good open-source apps as a daily driver. In general, I would recommend the phone to others.