I was hesitant for a long time, but I’m not using the Murena Fairphone 6 here in the states. I see a lot of people hesitant about it, will it work for X or Y, etc. Suprisingly there are very very few things that haven’t worked for me, it’s mostly a fork of LineageOS with microG.
Still, I wanted to open a forum for folks who are ready to leave Google thanks to them killing off installing your own apps, maybe my experience will help those who are questioning if they should or not
Have you found an alternative use for the Fairphone Moments switch? Did /e/OS include anything to set that up?
Nothing too exciting, it’s a killswitch which disables mic and camera
How’s the camera?
So far I haven’t had any issues, I’ll let their specs speak more for me: https://www.fairphone.com/en/2025/08/07/lets-talk-fairphone-gen-6-cameras/
I’ll say as an average photo taker mostly taking photos on vacations, it’s been a solid camera. Never felt that the resolution or quality is bad. Maybe you’d notice if you really really cared and wanted to come from iPhone? This question is tricky for me because it’s subjective. For me, I’m happy with it.
How about messengers?
Specifically Signal and Threema.
Are they still working as expected?
This is the biggest fear I have. Messaging is essential, but often seems to rely on google services for real time message push.
I am currently using a vanilla LineageOS with basic Google Services and Apps installed because of this fear.Not OP, but /e/os has microg and for me signal is working fine (also /e/os on Fairphone 6). /e/os also has Unifiedpush integrated, so if you are willing to spend a bit of time you could use Molly (Signal fork) without google services
I’m mostly in the States, but i travel to Asia, will it work there? I’m on fi.
This unfortunately I can’t answer as I haven’t traveled since I got it, but if fi works I would assume it would still work there. From what I understand that’s more about the antenna in the phone and the coverage, and the antenna works with the standard T-Mobile network
Ok. I had some weird feeling like the us version of the phone won’t work overseas
hows the Banking apps though?
most banks block unsupported OS’s
This was a big worry for me switching over. I can say that I’ve set up 3 separate (large) banks and all three have functioned without a hitch. I think microG is doing a lot of lifting, it basically manages that attestation
I am a T-Mobile user, so does it work on the T-Mobile network? I can’t remember if Google Fi is a T-Mobile MVNO at this point or not. Though to be fair, if I was to get that device, I would be putting LineageOS on it because I honestly hate EOS with their iOS-like design and the fact that it has the Micro-G services on it.
From what I understand, yes it will. Fi is a T-Mobile MVNO and they explicitly say they run on all T-Mobile MVNOs
Cool, thanks
I have mint. The fairphone 4 works with it. I would expect 6 would be fine.
Do you know if it will work with Verizon?
It will not work with Verizon, something with their signal protocols or something. Only T-Mobile and its mvnos
I just got mine yesterday (also USA). I am a little sad to lose tap to pay. Hopefully, microg and team come up with a solution.
The only app that completely refuses to work so far is ClaudeAi.
I configured the physical switch to the flashlight. Are you leaving it on mic and camera?
I had no idea it was configurable! I think flashlight would be great!
Settings->system->switch
It’s prettyI think they could really use making a web page that covers all the current features, because some of the old articles say that the switch doesn’t work or it doesn’t support the Fairphone moments app. I think it actually does, although I haven’t used it yet.
Definitely agree, most of the docs I find are for the fairphone 3 and 4. Thanks for telling me about the switch!
I have no desire to stay on Google, but also have a lot of use cases to migrate before I can cut loose. Shared calendars, email accounts (should be able to sync with FairEmail as I work on migrating accounts), maps (OSM address search never works for me), Fi carrier, maybe others. Was the LineageOS transition a big change? How often do you need to troubleshoot for app installation, carrier configuration, etc?
I have many of the same issues, and was able to work through it. Their /e/OS comes bundled with microG, and Google Services replacement. Because of this, I was able to install:
Google Calendar Gmail Google Maps Google Fi (Fi is my carrier, but I’m looking for a new one)
Installing apps was as simple as downloading the relevant Google app from the “App Lounge”, which is a Play Store equivalent. The only Google thing I couldn’t do was enable my Google Calendar for my work account, because they require a YubiKey, and there’s something there blocking it, but they claim to be working on it for the next major release of microG.
There was a bit of fear when I set it up that I wouldn’t be able to set up Fi, the first login attempt to my google account failed, but the second one passed perfectly fine.
