The fairphone 3, with the /e/ android operating system, supports quite many apps also found in the Google Play store, although they do use their own repository (‘Apps’). In my experience / understanding all apps that don’t rely on libraries specific to Google could possibly work. What I mostly miss are banking apps and stuff that needs online payment.
I also miss the beeminder app, which I don’t find in their ‘Apps’ store. Is there a fundamental problem, or could this be relatively easily be provided?
And the FAQ: Which Android apps are compatible with /e/OS?
Most Android apps can be installed on /e/OS.
For now, we don’t support paid apps or in-app purchases.
As Google Mobile Services are not preinstalled on our phones, some apps that depend heavily on those services might not run properly. We update our system regularly to support more apps.
You can check if an app is already listed with our store here. In case an app isn’t yet listed in our store, you can request it directly from the store itself. We can also help you find other sources to access apps.
Good news and bad news! The bad news is we don’t have even close to the bandwidth for this, like even if it’s just “recompile the app with such-and-such settings”, that’s not going to realistically happen. The good news is that we’re philosophically totally on board and endorse anyone else making it happen. Oh but more bad news is that we may well have Google libraries for things like push notifications or something, but I’m kind of clueless here. Our iOS app is open source already but not our Android app yet.
I think this is basically a “gapps-less” device? We have at least a few active users using Beedroid without “gapps”.
Beedroid functions on a gapps-less device, currently. However, we don’t test new releases in any configurations that don’t have push notifications. Without push notifications, the app has to check with the server periodically rather than being told when you have new data, and this makes some things feel less “up to date”, but it gets up to date soon enough, and the refresh button always works if you know you have data.
Is there a way to load up an arbitrary APK (“sideload”) on the fairphone?
So I had a chance to test installing beedroid on my fairphone. As far as I can see, it works flawlessly (although I did only some limited testing). Even updates I do via the website are up to date when I open the app immediately after; whether they are pushed or pulled I’m not sure, but it works fine for me.