E-Phone
Reproduction
An /e/ phone in 2020
e Foundation
One of the projects I have been watching with curiosity over the past year is /e/ (formerly Eelo), a mobile operating system that is based on Android, but with the pieces associated with Google's software and services removed. The project is described as follows:
/e/ is a complete, fully 'unGoogled', mobile ecosystem.
We could have just focused on an OS, but apps and on-line services are critical components of a smartphone experience, too.
/e/ consists in a mobile operating system (OS) and carefully selected applications, together forming a privacy-enabled internal environment for mobile phones.
Combined with on-line services, such as a search engine, e-mail, storage and other on-line tools, it creates a unique environment: privacy-in, privacy-out.
One of the big challenges any open source mobile platform faces these days is competing with the vast application stores of Android and iOS. The /e/ operating system side-steps this issue by providing what is essentially the Android operating system, but with open source technologies replacing Google apps and services. This allows /e/ to run most Android apps and therefore benefit from the Android ecosystem while providing a more open platform, less dependent on advertisements and data harvesting for revenue.
The /e/ Foundation was kind enough to send me a demo phone which arrived in a nondescript brown box. Inside the box was the product's box itself which declares brightly on the front: "your data is your data". The back of the box lets us know it contains a smart phone with a one-year warranty that has been unlocked and is compatible with Android apps.
Inside the box I found a little booklet which explains how to set up the phone. (Charge it, insert the SIM card and follow on-screen instructions.) The directions, while brief, are printed in five languages: English, French, German, Italian, and Spanish.
The /e/ phones, while they can be run anywhere in the world, are sold only in Europe presently.
The box also contains the phone, a Samsung Galaxy S9 in my case, a set of earphones, a European outlet-to-USB adaptor, a USB cable, and a little pin that can be used to pop open the Samsung's SIM port.
For people who do not live in Europe, you can buy a supported model of Android phone, download /e/ and flash it to your device. In the future, the /e/ Foundation plans to make a service available where people can mail in their devices and /e/ will install their operating system on it and ship back the phone.
Getting set up
In the booklet which came with the /e/ phone there is a recommendation for visiting a website to sign up for an /e/ account. This account gives us 5GB of on-line storage (with the option to upgrade), an e-mail account, and the ability to automatically synchronize files, settings, tasks, and contacts from our phone. The on-line account appears to mostly be implemented using Nextcloud and I will talk about that later. For now I will say the on-line registration process worked smoothly and I was up and running with a new account quickly.
The phone I received arrived mostly charged and I let it sit plugged in for a while to top it off. I like that there is a light on the phone that changes colour, depending on whether it is charging, fully charged, or has a notification waiting to be read. This makes it easier to check the device's status without activating the display.
There are four buttons on the phone I received. Volume Up, Volume Down, Power, and one which does not appear to do anything. Turning on the phone brings up a mostly white logo screen. We are then walked through a few configuration steps, beginning with selecting our preferred language from a list. Before moving onto the next screen, a warning popped up and told me "calendar has stopped". This was perhaps the only error I saw during my trial, but its timing (at the beginning of the test run) was not a great early impression.
The phone's wizard continues to walk us through selecting our time zone, optionally connecting to a wi-fi network, and (again optionally) enabling location services for permitted apps. We can then choose to enable fingerprint unlocking and protecting the phone with a PIN. Finally, we have the option of putting in our on-line /e/ account credentials to synchronize the phone with our cloud account. So far things were going fairly smoothly.
First impressions
Once the setup process was complete, /e/ displays a user interface that is made up of two screens and we can use a swipe gesture to move between them. The main screen has launcher icons for installed applications. Toward the bottom of this screen are four icons set aside (fixed in place) which provide access to the Phone app, a texting application, the camera, and the web browser. The second screen featured two widgets, one showing the local weather and another which showed recommended (typically recently used) applications I might want to launch again. Along the top of both screens is a status bar that can be pulled down to see notifications and access some settings. At the very bottom of the display are three buttons which should be familiar to Android users, the Back, Home, and Open Windows buttons. The default wallpaper for /e/ is bright and mostly orange, which reminds me of a close-up view of the Firefox logo.
Included software
The /e/ phone arrived with several apps already installed for me. The line-up included a calculator, calendar, the Chromium browser (re-branded as the /e/ browser). The device also features a clock, file manager, photo gallery, camera, mail client, music player, and note taking app. There is an audio recorder, a task tracker, the Magic Earth GPS/maps application, and a weather application. There is also a phone call making application and texting app to round out the experience.
Playing around with the included software, I generally found things worked well and as expected. It has been about three years since I last used an Android phone for any extended period of time, but it was fairly easy for me to get back into the habit of using the Android-style applications. The phone running /e/ was very responsive and I liked how snappy it was and how smoothly the user interface performed.
One of the few problems I had when using the Samsung phone was getting accurate location information. For instance, when I was using the Maps app, at first my perceived location was off by several kilometres. After a reboot, the GPS managed to place my position closer, but still off by several blocks. I tried the Maps app a few times and it never got more accurate than a few blocks away from my actual position. If I manually entered my current location, the GPS functions would work and provide directions to where I wanted to go, but it did require that I tell the phone where it was and prepare to slightly adjust my expectations of the directions given.
The other GPS-related quirk I ran into came from the Weather app. There is a default widget on the second screen which shows the current weather forecast and, as far as I could tell, it accurately displayed both my location and the local weather. Tapping the weather widget opened the full Weather app. By default the Weather app showed my position as being in London, England rather than Canada. I went into the app's settings and tried to enable location data, but this failed with an error reporting I needed to grant the app permission to access the GPS data. This seemed like a good idea, but it was not immediately clear if I could do this from within the app. I found that clicking the app's Update Location button did bring up a prompt to get access to location data, but the lookup failed. I had to close the app and re-open it before it would update its position. Then it did show weather data for a town in my province in Canada, just not the town I was in. I chalked this up to being "close enough" for all practical purposes.
Hardware specifications
Though the phone's hardware was not my focus during my trial, the platform always plays a role in how well an operating system works. The detailed specifications of the Samsung device list it has having an octa-core CPU running at up to 3GHz. My device shipped with 64GB of storage, 8.3GB of which was used for the operating system. The phone offered 3.5GB of RAM and I generally used about 1.9GB of memory when the phone first booted.
The Samsung offers two cameras, a 12 megapixel camera in the back and an 8 megapixel view in the front. The interface was very responsive and smooth during my trial. Apps opened quickly and gestures responded immediately to my touch.
The phone's hardware all worked smoothly, including wireless networking, the microphone, camera, and (with some quirks) GPS. I did not have any cause to test Bluetooth connections, but the phone enables Bluetooth by default.
Adding new apps
Downloading new applications on /e/ is quite straight forward. There is an icon labelled Apps on the main screen and tapping it opens the phone's software centre. The centre is arranged much the same way as the Google Play store or the Linux Mint software centre. The front page of the store shows popular items we can scroll through and new programs can be installed with the tap of a button. Tabs at the bottom of the store's page allow us to browse through categories of software or search for apps by name. The store can also handle updates to programs we have already installed.
My experience with the Apps store was entirely painless and I found it easy to navigate. The interface was snappy and smooth. If I had any complaint it might be that the store's main page looks a little crowded on the Samsung's screen, but it is a small concern. Functionally and visually the store is quite good and I had no problems hunting down new applications.
I went looking for quite a few programs and found lots of popular Android apps, including Spotify, Firefox, Telegram, WhatsApp Messenger, the F-Droid open software centre, Facebook, Plants vs Zombies 2, KDE Connect, and so on. In short, there seems to be no shortage of applications. However, not all programs available in Google's Play store are available through the /e/ store. If you need an application which is currently missing there is an option in the Apps store to request the app be added.
The one issue I did have was at one point the /e/ phone popped up a notification that let me know there was an app update waiting to be installed. Tapping the notification opened the Apps store and I tapped the Updates tab. The Updates tab showed there were no new downloads available. The next day I checked back and there was one update listed (for KDE Connect), which updated without any problems.
On-line services
Earlier I mentioned signing up for an account which provides on-line storage and synchronization options. There is an on-line portal we can sign into that is basically Nextcloud with modules set up for handling e-mail, contacts, tasks, and a calendar. The web-based service is quite useful and I think its ability to sync data, especially calendar appointments and contacts, will do nicely to fill in for Google's equivalents. The only problem I potentially see is sharing these features with other users. I know several families who coordinate through Google Calendar and I don't think most people are going to be prepared to switch or coordinate with someone who insists on using the Nextcloud calendar instead.
That being said, the on-line storage works very well. Photos, appointments, and contacts all sync automatically when we enable our account on the /e/ phone. Sometimes it takes a while for items to sync and it looks like the on-line Documents folder does not sync down to the phone, but the other folders do sync in both directions and it all works transparently.
Observations and other features
The /e/ phone allows users to apply permissions or restrictions dealing with a wide variety of access for each app. We can adjust access to contacts, our calendar, local storage, the microphone, and so on. Things tend to be pretty locked down by default. This is good for security, though sometimes inconvenient. For example, I had to grant the web browser permission to save files to my phone, then grant permission to open the file I had just saved. This sort of fine-grained permission is a careful balancing act between providing safe defaults and not inadvertently training the user to simply tap through permission prompts. For the most part I think /e/ does a good job in this arena, keeping things locked down, but usually not too much.
It took me a while to find software updates for the base operating system. These updates can be found in the Settings panel, under the "About phone" screen. Specifically, the item we need to look at is called "LineageOS Updates". When I began using the phone there were two updates available. I installed the latest, which rebooted my phone, installed the update cleanly and caused the older update to be hidden. The update, which was 719MB in size, went smoothly.
However, when I installed the update, I discovered vibration feedback (when typing) was turned on. I had disabled vibration feedback when I first started using the phone. The setting was still off under the vibrations and notifications settings so I had to spend a while hunting down where else I had to disable the physical feedback. I eventually found it tucked away under Settings->System->Languages & Input-> Keyboard & Inputs->Virtual Keyboard. It was a long dig down, but it allowed me to keep my phone from vibrating whenever I was typing.
Earlier I mentioned updates to the /e/ operating system can be found under a section of the Settings panel under the heading of LineageOS Updates. This highlights an interesting issue of identification I kept seeing. On the surface everything is branded as "e" or "/e/".
But scratch the surface and we see the phone refer to itself as being "Powered by Android", or as running LineageOS, or running Linux. For example, the "About phone" screen identifies the phone as Android 8.1.0 and LineageOS 0.7, running Linux 4.9.133 with SELinux enabled. The on-line cloud storage, on the surface, refers to itself as "e" and copyrighted by the "e Foundation", but digging into some screens causes the portal to refer to itself as Nextcloud.
For people who never peek beneath the surface, these quirks of identity probably don't matter. However, it is one of those little things that can confuse people when they are poking around or trying to get support. Hopefully the rebranding will become more complete over time.
On a separate topic, I could not get my desktop computer, running GNU/Linux, to talk over USB with the /e/ phone. Even after confirming the phone's MTP protocol was enabled, and after trying multiple file managers on the desktop (including Dolphin and Thunar) I was unable to directly access pictures or files on the phone from my desktop.
Luckily, the /e/ phone's software centre includes the KDE Connect service. This allows the phone to share files, notifications, and some other features with a desktop computer. KDE Connect is probably the one important tool I miss when I'm not running Android on my phone, and it was nice to see this service is available.
Conclusions
One of the tricky aspects of evaluating /e/, especially at this early stage, was trying to decide on what my perspective should be going into this review. Should I view /e/ from the point of view of a UBports user looking at alternatives? A former Android user interested in an un-Googled alternative? A relative novice to technology looking at phone options and comparing /e/ against iOS and Android? A privacy enthusiastic looking for a more locked down device? A person can try to wear a lot of different hats when looking at a new piece of technology and I was not sure the best angle to use when approaching /e/.
For the most part I tried to view /e/ through two lenses: 1. Would it function as a good alternative for me personally when compared to UBports? 2. Could I hand this phone over to non-technology enthusiasts (like a parent or friend) and have them use it instead of iOS or Android?
Looking at /e/ as an alternative to UBports, I see some immediate benefits to /e/. It has a much larger and more mainstream application ecosystem. The /e/ platform runs more programs other people are likely to be using and this makes it easier to coordinate with other people. The /e/ phone has more settings and fine-tuning options. This makes for a much more cluttered Settings panel, but it also offers more control. Perhaps the best feature though is the on-line storage and sync options. UBports doesn't really have a competitor to Google services, like calendar and contact synchronization, and it is a feature I miss. The Nextcloud web interface is quite good and I see it as not only better than anything in the UBports ecosystem, I'd argue that it beats Google's services in terms of friendliness and accessibility. The only problem is getting people you coordinate with on-line to use Nextcloud instead of Google Calendar or Google Docs.
Personally, I think UBports does have a few benefits. It offers a full GNU/Linux platform, compared to Android's (or /e/'s) somewhat bare bones underpinnings. UBports also streamlines its settings more and has a much more flexible and powerful status bar compared to /e/.
On the whole, I feel UBports provides the better base operating system while /e/ is providing a better and more powerful ecosystem around the phone. The apps and services /e/ offers are far and away richer than anything UBports supplies, but I like the UBports interface and low-level features better.
As to whether I could hand this phone over to a non-technical user, I experimented by doing just that. I met with a current iOS/iPhone user and asked her to play around with my new phone. She had no trouble setting up tasks, appointments, browsing the web, and installing and accessing Spotify. While the interface was slightly unfamiliar, as it was from the Android family rather than the Apple family of operating systems, she had no trouble getting used to the experience. In fact, since she was accustomed to tapping buttons instead of swiping (which is the common interaction on UBports) she adjusted faster to the new phone than I did.
The /e/ phone does not offer all the apps Android does, and it might not be entirely polished yet in the re-branding experience. However, it does provide a very solid, mostly Android compatible experience without the Google bits. The /e/ team offers a wider range of hardware support than most other iOS and Android competitors, it offers most of the popular Android apps people will probably want to use (I only discovered a few missing items I wanted), and the on-line cloud services are better than those of any other phone I've used (including Ubuntu One and Google).
I'd certainly recommend /e/ for more technical users who can work around minor rough edges and who won't get confused by the unusual branding and semi-frequent permission prompts. I'm not sure if I'd hand one of these phones over to an Android power-user who uses a lot of niche apps, but this phone would certainly do well in the hands of, for instance, my parents or other users who tend to interact with their phones for texting, phone calls, and the calendar without using many exotic applications.
This phone feels like a good first version from the /e/ team and, as the web portal firms up and more Android apps are imported into the project's software centre, I feel I will be comfortable recommending this platform to just about anyone who doesn't specifically need (or want) Google services.
1. Sometimes the phone identified itself as a Galaxy S8, though usually as an S9, depending on the screen or service I was using. Memory was also reported differently in various areas. The command line reports 3.5GB of RAM, the "About phone" screen lists 3.3GB, and the on-line specifications claim the phone offers 4GB of RAM. There is no practical difference in either case, but I find the little variations interesting.
As I still have the /e/ phone and am continuing to play with it, I will be happy to answer questions about the device's software and services. Should you have a question about the /e/ phone, please leave a comment below or e-mail me. I will publish my answers in a future issue of DistroWatch Weekly.
