Over the past few months, we’ve fallen short in communicating with you about certain issues that you have been flagging on the forum, such as the long wait times for customer support and the long overdue Android 14 update for the Fairphone 4. We’re truly sorry about that. It was never our intention to leave you in the dark, but rather, to wait till we had something solid to share. However, saying nothing is not the way to go. We want to make this right. So we’re sharing this update to explain wh...
xiaomi doesn’t allow third party launchers anymore?? what a shitty change. since when is that?
also, I would rather have “subpar” hardware and a decent OS than trendy hardware and all the bloat and datamining of the world. but that honestly excludes most phones.
To be precise, Xiaomi OS allows you to change launchers, but you can’t use navigation gestures with them, you have to use the 3-buttons. It’s a deal breaker for quite a few people, and it’s a shame, because besides that the phones are great on paper.
The decision between the hardware and the OS is personal. I got a S23 recently because I wanted a smaller phone, it’s great so far.
I considered Pixels for a while, but on top of the subpar hardware the fact that you can’t remove the Google search bar from the Pixel launcher is still crazy to me.
I’ve had a Motorola 30 Fusion for a while, it’s a great device. If the Edge 50 Neo had a better chipset, that would have been my go-to.
you can’t remove the Google search bar from the Pixel launcher is still crazy to me.
yeah that’s crazy, but it’s relatively easy to fix compared to deep rooted bloat and whatnot in the system. the pixels even have good support for some alt ROMs, that can’t be told about most samsungs, so you are basically forced to use their software
xiaomi doesn’t allow third party launchers anymore?? what a shitty change. since when is that?
also, I would rather have “subpar” hardware and a decent OS than trendy hardware and all the bloat and datamining of the world. but that honestly excludes most phones.
To be precise, Xiaomi OS allows you to change launchers, but you can’t use navigation gestures with them, you have to use the 3-buttons. It’s a deal breaker for quite a few people, and it’s a shame, because besides that the phones are great on paper.
The decision between the hardware and the OS is personal. I got a S23 recently because I wanted a smaller phone, it’s great so far.
I considered Pixels for a while, but on top of the subpar hardware the fact that you can’t remove the Google search bar from the Pixel launcher is still crazy to me.
I’ve had a Motorola 30 Fusion for a while, it’s a great device. If the Edge 50 Neo had a better chipset, that would have been my go-to.
yeah that’s crazy, but it’s relatively easy to fix compared to deep rooted bloat and whatnot in the system. the pixels even have good support for some alt ROMs, that can’t be told about most samsungs, so you are basically forced to use their software
I unbloated the S23 quite quickly, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be.
Pixels have indeed good support for alt ROMS (the grapheneOS support almost made me get one), but the battery issue seem to happen quite often:
https://old.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/1jorwd3/battery_megathread_april_2025/mnybfar/