No different to any previous Fairphone, or indeed the majority of Android phones on the market from any manufacturer other than Google. Fairphone is in an unfortunate situation in a way, because its devices have (in recent history) been more open than that of any other manufacturer other than Google, which means there is a thriving custom ROM scene that includes privacy-focused competitors to GrapheneOS, yet its devices have also never met the requirements for the GrapheneOS team and so routinely get “slammed” by its developers who have to respond to requests/questions every time a new Fairphone releases. Clickbait Android “news” sites then run these developer replies taken from social media or forums as “news” and people who don’t bother to read beyond the headline/don’t know anything about the topic (AKA the majority) come away with the completely misguided impression that Fairphone is not just “not as private and secure as a Pixel with GrapheneOS” but is actually “bAd fOr pRiVaCy aNd sEcUriTy” compared to all devices on the market. Devices from most manufacturers lag well behind Pixel update times, most don’t even maintain a monthly update schedule, yet you will never see negative news articles about how these other devices are insecure/lacking in privacy. Only Fairphone gets hit with this comparison because only Fairphone has even attempted to compete in that space.
The problem is that it would take a ton of effort for fairphone to comply with grapheneOS because they need a separate TPM chip and custom firmware and (likely) a lot of android integration stuff for it that Google has a habit of keeping to themselves for a competitive edge (e.g. new android material designs exclusive to pixels for X years, GCam, etc…)
I have also heard that the Graphene team can be a bit toxic, so those things combined with the fact that they would probably get <1% of their sales with a preinstalled Graphene option makes it likely not worth it for them.
I would also love to get a fairphone and run Graphene on it, but I just don’t see it happening.
No different to any previous Fairphone, or indeed the majority of Android phones on the market from any manufacturer other than Google. Fairphone is in an unfortunate situation in a way, because its devices have (in recent history) been more open than that of any other manufacturer other than Google, which means there is a thriving custom ROM scene that includes privacy-focused competitors to GrapheneOS, yet its devices have also never met the requirements for the GrapheneOS team and so routinely get “slammed” by its developers who have to respond to requests/questions every time a new Fairphone releases. Clickbait Android “news” sites then run these developer replies taken from social media or forums as “news” and people who don’t bother to read beyond the headline/don’t know anything about the topic (AKA the majority) come away with the completely misguided impression that Fairphone is not just “not as private and secure as a Pixel with GrapheneOS” but is actually “bAd fOr pRiVaCy aNd sEcUriTy” compared to all devices on the market. Devices from most manufacturers lag well behind Pixel update times, most don’t even maintain a monthly update schedule, yet you will never see negative news articles about how these other devices are insecure/lacking in privacy. Only Fairphone gets hit with this comparison because only Fairphone has even attempted to compete in that space.
The problem is that it would take a ton of effort for fairphone to comply with grapheneOS because they need a separate TPM chip and custom firmware and (likely) a lot of android integration stuff for it that Google has a habit of keeping to themselves for a competitive edge (e.g. new android material designs exclusive to pixels for X years, GCam, etc…)
I have also heard that the Graphene team can be a bit toxic, so those things combined with the fact that they would probably get <1% of their sales with a preinstalled Graphene option makes it likely not worth it for them.
I would also love to get a fairphone and run Graphene on it, but I just don’t see it happening.