March 31st 2023
Updated February 7th 2025
Yet another AOSP project discovered
Since I started talking about de-googlified phones, people have been asking me if I have heard of "this-particular-phone". I like it. It makes me stay informed. I recently got tipped about Murena phones that comes pre-installed with /e/OS. I promised to check it out, and I wasn't disappointed.
Quick About Murena
The company is based in Finland. At the moment they have one phone called Murena One. Cheap, but pretty poor specifications. No better than my current Volla phone. The other phones on their website are based on other vendors hardware but with /e/OS preinstalled, like the Fairphone 4 for example (I really want to write about the fairphone in the future). Murena also offer cloud solutions based on Nextcloud, which is something I myself consider to do. So Basically what I get out of Murena is that they mostly offer installation and services related to open-source products. Good to know about your competitors.
/e/OS
Anyway, let's look at /e/OS. The first thing I wonder is how do you pronounce it? Either "E OS" or "slash E slash OS" are acceptable I guess. The E stands for "everyone". I also recognized that logo. It's because the /e/ Foundation are sponsors of the MicroG project. Calling this "just another AOSP project" is probably unfair after I read about it. The /e/ Foundation seems actually very serious about their mission, and have contributed greatly to the open source market.
Privacy features
What is common with LineageOS, GrapheneOS, VollaOS and /e/OS is that they are all de-googled. That is the most important aspect of being a privacy-oriented smartphone.
/e/OS comes pre-installed with MicroG and Google alternative apps that are all open source, apart from the map application, which is called Magic Earth. Even if it isn't open source, it is based on open street maps and they promise that they won't track your phone or gather your personal details. If you want a complete open source alternative, you can always download OsmAnd. It might not be as fancy looking as Magic Earth or Google Maps, but for navigation, it get's the job done.
/e/OS also includes some advanced privacy features like:
Tracker Management
Location Faking
IP Address faking
There are some benefits, drawback and alternative solutions for these features. Let's start with tracker management: The benefit of tracker management is that you will be notified when an app is trying to gather personal information and send it of to the Internet. In some cases this might lead to false positives and you have to white-list some apps. In other cases it might be hard for the service to know if you voluntarily consented to send tracking information or not. This is the same thing what some privacy-oriented web-browsers do. Since I haven't used this feature on a phone, I can't say if it works hassle-free.
About Location faking: So apparently there are some apps that require you to turn on location for no apparent reason. In those cases I can understand you would need a feature like this. But I mostly just keep location off, and I only turn it on for apps that really do need location, like navigation apps for instance; quite important to have correct location then, obviously.
The IP address faking is based on the Tor network. Tor is very good for privacy in the old IPv4 world, but it does slow down the app speed. I think that a wider adoption of IPv6 would be a better solution, as long as you use randomized temporary IPv6 addresses.
Appearance and user friendliness (Updated)
A while after writing this, I ended up buying a Fairphone 5 and flashed /e/OS on it. The reason I choose Fairphone, is that you can easily detach the battery, so you can be absolutely sure that nobody is spying on you. And also, the specs were descent and it’s very modular, which should mean that I don’t need to buy a new phone for a long time.
Compared to the first Volla Phone I used for a few years, The GUI looks more nicer*. It has crashed a few times, but that might be because I’m running the experimental version. I suggest you install the stable version instead. Most apps works, even more than on Volla OS. Having all the privacy features pre-installed makes it very hassle free for less advanced users.
Note: I'm basing my comparison on the Original Volla phone. As far as I know, the Volla 22 seems to have improved its GUI and have more customization options.
Speaking of privacy features: In one update, location faking got turned on by itself. All the suddenly I was placed somewhere on the other side of the world. I thought it was a bug, but it was a feature, that I had forgotten about, until I re-read this article. It was a hassle to navigate without my correct location, but I managed for a few months. Now I found out that you can turn on/off those privacy features under Settings > Advanced Privacy.
Otherwise I don’t know what to say. I like the Fairphone 5 and the /e/OS and not planning to replace it for a while.
Adaption rate
I was amazed over how many supported phones there were. As I read the documentation, apparently the latest version of /e/OS is a fork from the LineageOS 18 (Android 11), which seems to support the same devices. An analogy from the Linux world can be that the Mint OS is a fork of Ubuntu OS, which is a fork of Debian OS.
Update: This was back in 2023. Now in 2025 I’m on Android 13. But the point is that /e/OS will always be a few Android versions behind.
Comparisons
Privacy wise I wouldn't say it's that much better than any other de-googled privacy focused phone. You could harden a vanilla LineageOS device to be just as secure. But that is the thing: you don’t need to worry about that with /e/OS. It’s all taken care of.
The advantage is its GUI, compared to Volla Phone, and it's user friendliness, compared to LineageOS. You could have a similar user experience with the LineageOS, but you have to put some effort into it.
The downside is that the latest version of /e/OS is based on LineageOS 18, which is based on Android 11. On the other hand, latest version of LineageOS is 20, which is based on Android 13. Me personally don't really care about having the latest android version, as long as the apps are working. The latest version of Volla OS is also based on Android 11, and I'm not complaining.
Update: again, above paragraph was written in 2023. I don’t know what the latest Android version is today but it is irrelevant for me.
Summary
Overall I think this is a great alternative to VollaOS (My previous privacy phone). In fact, I don’t feel the need to try another Volla again (unless I got it for free for reviewing purpose).
/e/OS works on many common standard phones that most people are using. If having a phone with one of the best performances and the best camera is a criteria for you, I wouldn’t recommend this. I would then suggest a Google Pixel 9 with Graphene OS in that case. There is a Swedish company that focus on privacy phones and have based their products on this combination: