European Phone Brands:

1. Shift 🇩🇪
2. Fairphone 🇳🇱
3. Jolla 🇫🇮
4. Volla 🇩🇪
5. Punkt 🇨🇭
6. HMD 🇫🇮

Is the ordering how you rate them?

Personally, I would rank them:

• Fairphone (repairable and supports fair materials + working conditions, mobile Linux support is growing too!)
• Jolla (affordable, SailfishOS)
• Shiftphone (repairable, privacy kill switches, not as available or as good value as Fairphone)
• HMD (affordable, repairable, Android)
• Volla (Ubuntu Touch)
• Punkt (closed bootloader, expensive)

edit: Shiftphone moved up. Personally, I think Fairphone is ideal (can run degoogled Android and mobile Linux, repairable, fair production, etc.), Jolla Phone is cheaper than Fairphone and ships with SailfishOS OOTB so is also nice for most people. Those two are probably the easiest recommendation to most people, the others have their own caveats.

Shiftphone is also repairable and has privacy kill switches (unlike Fairphone) but not as good value spec wise, HMD produces cheaper Android devices of questionable quality, and only a few support custom ROMs, Volla is cool if you like Ubuntu Touch but their devices are a bit expensive + not repairable (latter is the main reason why I rank it lower), and Punkt uses a locked bootloader, so custom ROMs are not an option.

I believe Punkt builds phones in Germany, shame about the locked bootloader.

I have used by Jolla Phone for 2 months now, just ask me what you want to know about it if you are considering to switch or are interested about it.

I use it as daily driver, I have an Android for my work phone and can use it for private needs as well, like bank apps but I have not needed that.

Do you prefer Jolla’s Sailfish UX over Nokia’s Windows UX?

How is the battery life?

Does physical 2FA like NitroKey or Yubikey work?

Does your phone stand out to people?

Do you feel comfortable going to Australia with just the phone?

How is Signal on Sailfish?

How do you rate the default browser?

Do Chipolo trackers work?

Do you have a preferred note taker app?

What about Australia?

I had a Nokia Lumia with Windows Phone many years ago :) I liked it better than Android at that time. It was so many years ago but I prefer Sailfish over Windows Phone.

Battery life is good but not excellent, I think most new Android will have better battery lifetime. I charge it to 90 % and it is usually around 40 - 50 % when I charge it the next day. However, the battery drains faster after a couple of days unless I restart it.

I have not tried and not looked for physical 2FA.

I have the orange model so I would say it stands out quite a lot.

With the work SIM card I have free calls, texts and data all over the world so I would bring it with me for that. I would bring it anyway to be sure that BankID works so I can transfer money to my card. I have not had any issue with that so far on the Jolla Phone but I would not want to be in Australia for a couple of weeks if there is an update of BankID that breaks it.
Edit: I would also bring an Android so I could use Revolut, which is the only app that I have tried which doesn't work.

There is a inofficial Signal app and it works. I added it as a secondary device because it was some bug to add it as primary device, I don't know if that makes any difference. I also use Signal with one friend only so I don't know how group chats works.

Default browser has a major issue, it lags. I tried with Duck duck Go browser from F-droid and it does not lag. The default browser is based on an old version of Gecko (engine for Firefox) as I understand it, would be better if it was a newer version but I have not found anything that doesn't work with it.

I have never heard of Chipolo, so same as the 2FA I have not been looking for that or tried it.

I use the built in note taking app but I think it was one inofficial Nextcloud notes. I have been thinking of setting up Nextcloud at home and then I would try that.

In my reply I assumed he meant Australia because it is in the other side of the world and that the typical travel there would be relatively long. So it is more demanding in the sense that you need to rely on the phone and can't usea back-up phone.

There's long stretches of outback, people take conveys to get through the centre part of the country.

Yeah, completely missed the point 😂

I wish fairphone had GrapheneOS support 😢

But it is gaining more and more Linux support

I would definitely buy Jolla, but I am in need of several government apps, and several need Google or Apple to work.

I hope they'll fix it in the future, but until then, I think Fairphone is necessary for me.

CalyxOS is there as a second tier choice. Typing on it right now!

Apparently vibe coded, and also I hear around Lemmy that apparently so badly that mainline postmarketos/Nura won't mainline it unless it is pretty rewritten.

Still, interested in trying it out!

Gigaset?

If I could rate HMD as lower than last, I would.

Absolute worst phone I ever had (when they were still lying with the Nokia branding). I had to change the USBC port 6 times in 1.5 years of using the phone because they used such garbage components.

Camera was worst I have seen, software was the buggiest I have ever used, headphone jack literally never worked from day 1, unusable bugs lasting months, and the battery was not the worst, but worse than average for sure. Plus it was as expensive as the pixel a series for a much much worse phone. I can't remember but I think it also had a locked bootloader.

It is good that it is semi-repairable (everything is still glued) because everything breaks constantly. I have never had a phone even in the same class of shit.

"It technically functioned" was really its only positive point. It looked pretty nice too I guess.

What OS in particular are working on it currently?

Fair enough, I haven't used one of their devices before, this is just what I've seen on the internet. I know that some of their devices are supported by LineageOS too (the Skyline and one other one), so that might fix the poor software problem?

But yeah, they're not fantastic for sure. I've only ranked them higher for repairability (albeit maybe Shiftphone should also be higher if that's the case, I've edited the comment now) and the price compared to the other European brands

Gigaset is not german any more. They were sadly bought by an Hong Kong enterprise. [1]

Didn't know that. Thanks.

I would have thought you asked about Australia because I've heard they ban some phone model IMEIs from the cellular network if a device isn't officially certified working with the national SOS system or something like that. But you were asking about the antenna and cellular bands supported? Or stability and usability when you need it the most?

I suppose all those factors.