Murena, a French company, is engaged in the “tasting” of Android smartphones for the sake of confidentiality. For the past five years, the company has been doing this as a non-profit fund, but in recent years, they have also opened a commercial division that sells devices on an alternative OS without tracking.
The company utilizes an open mobile OS on various new or restored smartphones, including Fairphone ethical manufacturer devices. They even offer to sell a pixel from Google which will also be devoid of ordinary services.
Instead of the usual Google services with tracking, users will find a set of Murena’s own open-source applications such as a browser, messaging apps, camera apps, contact apps, etc. The exception is with Maps, where a third-party application called “Magic Earth” is preinstalled.
The main promise of /E/OS is the lack of data transfer to Google or other third parties by default, ensuring that the system itself is blocked from surveillance.
However, even smartphones on /E/OS cannot completely abandon the connection with Google. The popularity of third-party applications makes it commercial suicide to completely abandon the services of Google. Therefore, a compromise is made where the OS asks users to enter their Google account to access paid applications on Google Play.
The application store for /E/OS is not Google Play, but an alternative called App Lounge provided by Murena. App Lounge offers open-source applications and progressive web applications. However, access to paid applications still requires entering a Google account and having Google Play on a separate Android device to make the purchase before loading it on Murena.
Thus, the dream of completely eliminating Google from Android becomes a series of compromises.
/E/OS comes with useful privacy tools such as a privacy application rating, tracker locks, the ability to change geolocation, and hiding the IP address. However, some performance and ease-of-use issues may still arise.
In general, /E/OS offers an ordinary and utilitarian smartphone experience. It cannot be considered truly private due to the need for compromises. However, for a certain audience concerned about confidentiality, this can be an interesting alternative to mainstream options.
Murena is trying to facilitate the transition from services like Gmail by offering a variety of tools for transferring user data. The company has also developed its own cloud services that replace Google documents, calendar, and other popular products.
Despite all their efforts, /E/OS still exists in a “gray”