You can include your phone specific model if you want.
I just got a Samsung Galaxy S23, switching from an iPhone 11, because I kinda fear that Apple might turn evil and start banning apps from the app store. I mean I knew about how restrictive iOS was but I kinda just justified it by the increased security that I perceived it to be. But recent events made me realize a corporation can turn from mildly annoying to full-on evil very quickly. With Android, I have the option of avoiding the Google Play Store if they start to do weird things with it. So that’s my story, what about you?
Fairphone 4 running /e/OS. I love the modularity, quality and robustness. Just the fact that if I drop my screen I can just replace it for €80 using my own hands.
/e/OS is still in development, which you sometimes notice, but I love its privacy focused aspects. It is decoupled from Google, includes a tracker monitor and blocker, an appstore that can download apps from the Google Play store anonymously and best of all the developers do deliver. All their releases are well tested.
The only thing I struggle with are in app purchases. If they use the Google Play platform they just won’t work.
I bought this phone from Murena, which is a branch of the /e/Foundation that sells devices with /e/OS preinstalled.
Having worked at /e/OS, on the microG part, I can tell you that the privacy focus is way less than whatever you think it is. Also, the companies (yes, plural) behind /e/ or whatever it’s called now are French, and the French laws regarding government and intelligence agencies access to personal data are lax. By using /e/ and their services, you are not passing data to the US, you are not passing data to China, but rather you are passing data to France and the /e/ team - which if you search around, you might find out that they don’t have a really good street cred.
Too bad the Fairphone isn’t available outside of Europe.