What is /e/?

/e/ is a complete mobile ecosystem which includes the ROM and online - services.

/e/ is

  • Open source
  • Pro-privacy
  • Compatible with most existing Android applications
  • Cares about usability

/e/ is an alternative to the Apple/Google duopoly for the android smartphone user.

/e/ consists of:

  • an installable mobile operating system for smartphones, which is forked from Android and completely “ungoogled”
  • a default set of open source applications that have been improved and optimized for the user
  • various online services that are linked to the mobile operating system, such as: a meta search engine for the web, a cloud drive with data synchronization, mail, calendar, notes, tasks.

/e/ is also available pre-installed on a range of /e/-smartphones.

Description of the /e/ ROM

The /e/ ROM is a fork of Android and in particular the LineageOS flavor of Android.

At present we support four Android versions:

  • Q
  • Pie
  • Oreo
  • Nougat

We will be starting the customization of our code base for Android R soon.

DeGoogling / UnGoogling

The goal of “unGoogling” is

  • To remove or disable any feature or code that is sending data to Google servers

  • To offer non-Google default online services, including for search.

  • Google default search engine is removed and replaced by other services (see below in default apps and services)
  • Google Services are replaced by microG and alternative services (see below for more details)
  • All Google apps are removed and replaced by equivalent Open Source applications. The one exception is the Maps Application
  • No use of Google servers to check connectivity
  • NTP servers are not Google NTP servers anymore
  • DNS default servers are not Google anymore, and their settings can be enforced by the user to a specific server
  • Geolocation is using Mozilla Location Services in addition to GPS
  • CalDAV/CardDAV management and synchronization application (DAVDroid) is fully integrated with the user account and calendar/contact application

More details about the state of /e/ OS deGooglisation can be found in this white paper.

User interface

  • A new launcher “BlissLauncher” was developed to offer an attractive look and feel. Its features include

    • Easy to understand UI with almost no learning curve for the new user
    • Application widget support
    • Uses the /e/ search engine by default
    • Icons that were designed specifically for the project.

  • Improvements made in settings to offer a better looking interface

Services

  • A specific file synchronization service has been developed for multimedia and file contents.

It can use /e/ cloud services server at https://ecloud.global or self-hosted /e/ cloud services (beta).

  • The weather provider is the LOS weather provider using data fetched from Open Weather Map
  • Account Manager has been modified to support /e/ user accounts, with a single identity, thus providing the /e/ users
    • /e/ email
    • /e/ sync
    • /e/ calendar
    • /e/ contacts
    • /e/ note
    • /e/ task

The /e/ user can decide where they want to store their data. It could be either the cloud server ecloud.global, or self-hosted by the user (ongoing development)

/e/ default applications

All pre-installed applications are open source applications except for the Maps app (read details about this in the Maps FAQ).

  • Web-browser: an ungoogled fork of Chromium, built from Bromite patch-sets, with specific /e/ settings
  • Mail: a fork of K9-mail for better user experience, some bugfixes and support for oauth, with OpenKeyChain for PGP encryption support
  • Message: a fork of QKSMS
  • Camera: a fork of OpenCamera
  • Dialer: default Android dialer application
  • Calendar: a fork of Etar calendar, that fixes crashes with calendar invitations
  • Contact: default Android contact application
  • Clock: a fork of Android deskclock application
  • Gallery: default Android gallery3d application
  • Filemanager: Android documentsui application
  • Sound recorder: default LineageOS sound recorder
  • Calculator: default Android calculator2 application
  • Keyboard: default Android keyboard
  • Android application installer is /e/ application installer, that supports more than 60,000 applications.

Other preinstalled applications:

  • Maps: MagicEarth (read the Maps FAQ for details about its license)
  • PDF reader: PdfViewer Plus
  • Notes: a fork of NextCloud Notes to support /e/ online accounts
  • Tasks: OpenTasks

/e/ online services at ecloud.global

Capture_d_écran_2019-04-30_à_14.33.38

  • /e/ “spot” at https://spot.ecloud.global search engine is a fork of SearX meta-search engine. Improvements made include

    • Peformance enhancements
    • User interface improvement

  • /e/ cloud includes

    • cloud drive
    • mail
    • calendar
    • contacts
    • Notes
    • Tasks
    • Office

It is built upon NextCloud, Postfix, Dovecot and OnlyOffice.

It has been integrated to offer a single login identity in /e/OS as well as online. accordion

Users can retrieve their data at https://ecloud.global services, or self-hosted on their own server

/e/ Development Updates

2019

We addressed a number of issues with ungoogling.

This included among others:

  • removed connectivity check against Google servers
  • replaced Google NTP servers by pool.ntp.org servers
  • replaced Google DNS servers by 9.9.9.9 by default and offer users to set the DNS servers of their choice

More details about the state of /e/ OS deGooglisation can be found in this white paper.

2020

  • We introduced the “easy installer” . It lets users install /e/ OS without using obscure tools or the command line.

    Currently available in Linux and Windows. Development is now community driven.

  • Working on pro-privacy features such as a “privacy dashboard”
  • Added more supported smartphones (FairPhone 3 and 3+, PinePhone, GigaSet…)
  • Worked on adding more features such as “my SMS to cloud” and “my geolocation to cloud” (Work in Progress)
  • Added Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) to the application installer V2

2021

  • Add the capability to un-install some of the system applications where possible
  • Offer corresponding Google-free SDKs for app publishers, because we believe that web apps is the future for most mobile applications.
  • Make /e/OS available in two versions:
    • standard /e/ with default applications
    • /e/ with minimal number of default/pre-installed applications

      This is partially implemented as some devices which have less disk space get a MINIMAL_APPS version of the /e/OS

What to expect in future releases?

Check out the eRoadmap section in our FAQ

Want to give /e/ a try?

Install it now!

Or

Purchase an /e/-smartphone.