Murena GS6 with /e/os

I wanted to write a bit about my excitement around the phone I am getting.

I am replacing my current phone, a Xiaomi Redmi Note 9 Pro, for multiple reasons. It is quite old at this point about 5 years old, which would not be a problem, however with the way things are going 64 Gb are starting to feel very limiting, which is a shame, and it definitely should not be this way if people still crafted applications instead of just making them but what can you do. Furthermore, its charging port is very messed up and can only be charged with one specific C cable that has been deformed in the exact way the charging port has, over the years. Of course its battery is also starting to weaken a lot by now, which could be solved with a battery change however that is expensive, and I would need to take it to a phone service which I do not want to do. Besides these the phone is in perfect condition, so I feel somewhat bad for switching away from it. Moreover, I am getting incredibly fed up with Google Play Services and the countless data collection software running on my phone 24/7, both thanks to Xiaomi and Google. I have seen a lot of people mentioning that the ads are quite annoying on the Xiaomi phones and while they were for a long time I found out you can turn them off quite easily, so while it does take 20 minutes to go through everything once after that there are no ads any more!

What was great about Xiaomi for me, that made me choose their phones throughout the whole part of my life when I had a smartphone?

It’s relatively cheap and comes with pretty good specs. That’s it. And I feel that for a young person it is alright if only these aspects matter.

However, since I got fed up with the spyware, and wanted to switch phones anyway because of growing storage needs and because of the charging port, I started looking at options. I was certain that I wanted something European-made, does not have to be fully made here in terms of parts and everything, but if the planning and assembly happened here, by a European company, that would be awesome. Both to support companies here and to get a greater protection against privacy concerns, in which the EU is not perfect of course with the whole chat control and such, however still light-years better than anywhere else.

What I had in mind?

I knew I wanted something with at least 128Gb storage, with okay battery life, so it can go a full day of usage / low-intensity usage with one charge (I know this is not necessarily a big ask in today’s world, but it is still something that I want, so I should note it). Enough RAM to support my daily usage, of which the most intensive parts are when I have music going, a browser open, a few Pdf files open and a file explorer, maybe a notes’ app. So my needs are not too high in that aspect but still want something decent. I don’t really care for camera quality as I take photos for myself, and they do not need to be high quality as I am usually only taking photos to remember something. I also knew that wanted something European-made, and that I wanted a model which can support an alternative phone OS to android as if I stuck with android I would get the same Google control and spyware that I currently have. (Also worth noting them restricting what applications were allowed on the Google Play Store even more in a similar model to what Apple has been doing for a long time took away one of the greatest strengths of android, which was the community aspect and that even I could make something stupid and put it on Google Play for my friends to download and anyone interested, I have also heard that they are also restricting third-party downloads which would terrible). I was already thinking about moving away from android for quite some time however sadly none of the options was available for my current phone except for Ubuntu Touch, but based on the showcases and reviews I have seen I am not touching that with a ten-foot pole for now.

What are the options?

For alternative OSes here are the options I have found:

• LineageOS
• GrapheneOS
• e/os/
• Ubuntu Touch
• Sailfish OS
• Nura (postmarketOS)
• CalyxOS

These are all I could find and almost all of these are still android forks without the Google bloat and spyware. It is incredibly hard to completely move away from android since the majority of the current application ecosystem only supports android, which is insane to think about how huge of a market share Android and iOS have in terms in phones. Even the ones not directly based off of android have their own special way of running and installing android applications, since that’s how without alternatives the ecosystem is.

Let’s take these options one by one. LinageOS sounds great all around I have no other comment on it. GrapheneOS is a weird one since I specifically want to further myself from Google by using this OS and it only works on Google Pixel phones(?) and apperently Motorola support is coming in 2027, which is owned by Lenovo. This would be a nice alternative since I find Google the best out of the big tech companies both in terms of morales and in terms of product quality, however newer Google Pixel phones are quite expensive, and I am not quite willing to wait another year to switch phones. e/os/ sounds great and I have no other comment on it. Ubuntu Touch as previously mentioned is really not my cup of tea. Sailfish OS also looks great, apart from the AppSupport feature being proprietary, which is a shame. However sadly it does not support a lot of phones and Jolla phones are currently not available at all. Also they are quite expensive too. However I hope they keep their momentum up as the Jolla phone really looks to me like it can become a great European alternative for a mid-range phone in a few years and it not coming with android I think can do a lot of good for the people, as most people do not think about what OS they use especially on their phones at all, and just use what comes with their phone preinstalled. I have looked somewhat into Nura and CalyxOS however they seemed to require a lot of setting up and fiddling around which I am not too willing to do for a phone. Since then I have to run code on a phone and type the commands in on a phone, be scared that I might break at (as they seem incredibly easy once you start messing around with it), and just all around seemed like a hassle.

For European-made / Fair phones here are the options I have found:

• Fairphone
• Jolla
• Nothing
• Gigaset
• Nothing CMF

Believe it or not, this is everything I could find, and I looked quite hard. This is honestly very saddening to see that these are pretty much the only European alternatives for phones.

Summary

All in all, I am very excited about this phone, about experimenting with it and seeing how a googless android can work and how it is possible to counteract the huge monopoly even on the applications.