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Comment by Kim_Bruning | Hacker News Reader

Fairphones are awesome, and they even come with a de-googled version of android. Also: Made in Holland!

Made in Suzhou, China.

As far as I know only Gigaset and HMD manufacture in Europe. And even those two only do final assembly in Europe, the components are still made in China.

Technically Fairphone could ship you a box of parts and have you assemble the phone yourself. Then it would be "Made in Europe" (or where-ever you live).

HMD manufacture in Europe? That's splendid news, something to upgrade after my old flashed pixel kicks the bucket

So? Step by step. Once the FairPhone gets a large-enough market, they may be able to move parts of the production to Europe.

Perfect is the enemy of the good (it also took HMD a while to have a model that was manufactured in Europe).

You’re not wrong, but honest question: do Fairphone actually have EU manufacturing as a goal? First I’ve heard of it.

I'm fairly sure they don't; at least historically, the goal has been to improve the situation on the ground, not to move production elsewhere. (I think this was the post in which they explained that thinking, but I didn't reread it just now: https://www.fairphone.com/en/2025/10/15/lets-talk-about-fair...)

The default OS is not de-googled Android though, but regular Android. You have to buy the /e/OS variant, which is slightly more expensive (or flash it yourself).

But with the long-term support and access to spare parts (the university can stock them), this seems like a good move. Also happy for FairPhone that they are getting more traction.

> The default OS is not de-googled Android though, but regular Android. You have to buy the /e/OS variant

For some definition of de-google, though. /e/OS is based on LineageOS which is based on AOSP which is developed by Google. And microg contacts the Google servers, doesn't it? My understanding is that it's just an open source implementation of the Play Services.

You really don't want /e/ on Fairphone. That's frankly worst of both worlds.

Insecure hardware with limited patches and updates, running insecure software with much patches skipped or delayed.

Most recent fairphone is based on Android 15, while 16 is available from mid-2025. Yes, that matters, releases is not only eyecandy, but also some security patches (ie: not many patches are back ported from 16).

https://support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/244637136412...

Features: https://eylenburg.github.io/android_comparison.htm

Historic security updates : https://web.archive.org/web/20241231003546/https://divestos....

So, I'd rather have second hand debloated midrange Motorola thank /e/, even less so on Fairphone.

*designed in holland

In the province* Holland, but the country The Netherlands :)

I live in South Holland and I still say to foreigners that "I am from Holland" meaning "I am from The Netherlands".

Technically correct but Holland has long been used as a strong branding name for the entire country. It wasn't until recent that they started to make a better distinction between the two.

Philips, ASML, Inventum and many other companies used "Made in Holland" on their products despite not being in the provinces of North and South Holland.

Pars pro toto... ;)

Partially, AOSP is still made by Google.

This no different from the fallacy of using Chrome and VSCode forks.

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