It’s been nearly 20 years since Google revealed Android

Right off the bat it’s incorrect.

Yeah this stuff was never impossible before, it’s just easy to digest now.

Nothing too exciting, it’s a killswitch which disables mic and camera

Update: I installed 3 separate (large) banking apps and all worked without a hitch, absolutely no problems

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

They also completely ignore that they had free training for green energy jobs, because they killed off all of that free training so they could keep saying “they’re terking ther jerbs”

I disagree with the other commenter. Your male friend is irrelevant, it comes down to trust, does your boyfriend trust you. I don’t like the opinion of the commenter of “Just dump him”, that’s a very throwaway concept. (Something isn’t perfect? Throw it out of your life. I don’t like that line of thinking)

I think you should communicate with your boyfriend, ask him why he feels that way, and ask why he feels like he can’t trust you. It’s a dialogue you two need to have. It won’t be a fun one, but if you both want the relationship to work you’ll come out stronger. (If he tries to say things like “He’s waiting for his turn”, turn it around, make it about you and him. “But do you trust me”?) You then give him time to learn and adjust to it. Of course if he refused to learn or adjust, and it doesn’t work, then it becomes a more serious decision.

My anecdote, I was your boyfriend for a long time. My SO, now spouse, was hanging out with someone who was clearly interested. To make it worse, I had been cheated on before so it was a massive trigger for me, and I was immediately paranoid (cheating really fucks with your trust). I grew jealous and it became very unhealthy. If my SO took the other commenter’s advice, we wouldn’t have the life we have now. Thank god they didn’t, and instead talked to me, and gave me the ability to learn and grow. I learned to trust her, and worked on myself, and now 15 years later we’re both very happy and have built a life together.

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

Haven’t run into any sites that don’t work, but I did install Firefox with ublock like my last phone, and so haven’t used the built-in browser much. FF handles everything perfectly, and no ads.

Haven’t tried banking apps, I’ll download a couple tonight and try them out and report back

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.

From what I understand, yes it will. Fi is a T-Mobile MVNO and they explicitly say they run on all T-Mobile MVNOs

That’s what I’m finding too, I tried with the Samsung app but it gets stuck at "Accept T&C"s page, which microG doesn’t have implemented. There’s a bounty out for that that I’m going to be contributing for

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.

Good and bad, but mostly good. It’s a solid phone, it does pretty much everything I could ask for. I was really nervous when I tried to activate it (I’m still on Google Fi, for now until I decide on a good carrier), and it activated without a hitch. The /e/OS App Lounge has pretty much every app, at least there aren’t any I haven’t found.

Setup was like setting up a phone back in the gingerbread days. Completely green field, figuring out what apps I liked and what I didn’t, there was definitely no guided “this is your phone”, more of a “Okay here you are, go make it your own now” vibe, like original Android.

No wallet, and I haven’t been able to get my Samsung watch to work with it, but there’s hope on the horizon there. For me, these are worth it to leave Google behind.

It doesn’t have every bell and whistle, I’d say it’s nothing fancy. It’s a solid phone. It has a good camera, battery, screen, but nothing amazing. I’d say it’s very… fair.

It definitely had me trust them for way too long. To be fair, I trusted the original CEOs and company though, who from what I can tell were decent enough people.

More power to you I suppose?

Would be interested too, or in bridges. I primarily am only there because of a few agencies that only have Insta, and family who refuse to use anything else. I never write anything and would love a way to read directly from somewhere else

Testing is a 1-way communication style. The most important foundation to a relationship is communication. “Testing” undermines that and is a red flag on date 1. Now, having a conversation and talking about things is something else.

I’m not sure either of those are first date material. 3rd or 4th sure, but 1st is just like “Are you a complete asshole or not, do we share any interests”

The monotony. Life has wonderful moments, and there is joy and love. There is also the constant grind. Buying groceries, cooking meals, doing laundry, cleaning. Things that we never thought of as children, but it takes so much time just to continue living and filling basic needs. That’s when you start to really appreciate the replicators in Star Trek. Sure at first it’s like “I could have takeout anytime”, but then you realize oh my god if I didn’t have to shop, get groceries, cook, put them away, move them home, the whole thing, we’d have so much more time.