Google-Free /e/ OS Is Now Selling Preloaded Phones In the US, Starting At $380

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: /e/ OS, the 'open-source, pro-privacy, and fully degoogled' fork of Android, is coming to Canada and the USA. Of course, you've always been able to download the software in any region, but now (as first spotted by It's Foss News) the e Foundation will start selling preloaded phones in North America. Previously, /e/ only did business in Europe. Like normal, the e Foundation's smartphone strategy is to sell refurbished Samsung devices with /e/ preloaded. In the US, there are only two phones right now: the Galaxy S9 for $379.99 or a Galaxy S9+ for $429.99. North Americans still have reason to be jealous of Europe, where you can get /e/ preloaded on a Fairphone, which is also Europe-exclusive. These Samsung phones are used devices, but the site says the devices have 'been checked and reconditioned to be fully working at our partner's facilities.' The phones have a one-year warranty and are described as 'Good-as-New' with 'no surprises.' An /e/ device means you'll be getting a fork of Android 10, and for ongoing support, the e Foundation says, 'We aim to support with at least 3 years of software updates and security patches.'

/e/ OS was founded by Gael Duval, the creator of Mandrake Linux, and the project describes itself as a 'non-profit project in the public interest.' /e/ is built a lot like a Linux distribution, in that it takes a curated collection of other open source projects, merges them into a single product, and does its best to fill in the remaining gaps. In this case, /e/ is based on LineageOS, the Android community's open source, device-ready version of Google's Android source code. The primary contribution of /e/ is filling in all the gaps left by the lack of Google apps, so there's an /e/ app store, an /e/ cloud storage and account system, and various Google-replacement apps like a Chromium-based browser, a fork of K-9 Mail for email, contacts, search, photos, etc. The company is even trying to build a Google Assistant replacement. Actually getting regular Android apps to run on a forked version of Android is a challenge. Google Play Services is built into many apps for things like push notifications, and there's a good chance that functionality won't work on /e/ OS. These apps will at least run on /e/ OS instead of exiting outright, thanks to the inclusion of MicroG, an open source project that hijacks Google API calls.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.