Asked myself the same question last week. Bought the AOSP Version and did the flashing myself - worked out fine! Just be careful if you want to return to Stock Android: You need to be sure not to revert to a ROM with an older security patch date than currently installed (See anti-rollback feature and the remarks in the official instructions). This could potentially brick your phone. Mine shipped with a patch from May 2025, so flashing to a ROM with June 2025 security patch (e/OS 3.02) worked fine. Wanted to save those 50€, too :D
this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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/e/OS
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A community about the /e/ Operating System developed by e Foundation.
/e/OS is a degoogled version of Android. It aims to be a good balance between privacy and usability. Forked from Lineage OS.
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Do any of you guys know what the benefit of letting them do it is?
The advantage boils down to
- You're sure it will work as expected.
- Spare you the effort of doing it yourself.
Is it worth it? Depends your skill level/interest in installing a new android on a phone (I have zero interest in doing that for example, and that is despite my computer running Linux), and what your time is worth to you (do you earn more in the time it would take you to do that yourself? If yes, it may be a reasonable choice to let someone else do it).
It's not too much of a hassle for me personally, so I think I'll just go with a regular one and install it myself.
also the very long warranty, if you install a OS yourself it voids it.
The warranty doesn't cover problems occuring during the installation procedure of the OS, but is not void in general.
https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/14487777708946-Warranty-with-an-Alternative-OS
Oh, fairphone leading by good example yet again. Thanks for pointing this out, makes installing it myself much more attractive again.
That is a good point