skarn

And you think Fairphones are made in Europe? They are made in China, just like all the iPhones and Google Pixels.

Fairphone is indeed Dutch, and they even make a point on their website of paying a decent living wage to all Chinese workers making their phones.

Typed from my Fairphone 4 running /e/OS

More like a derivative, they consistently port stuff over from Lineage, which is just a distribution of Android, which is in turn based on a gazillion other OS project starting from Linux.

In the end either it's good enough to have the "headquarters" of this specific project in Europe, no version of Android can be considered European enough, as it all depends way too heavily on Google.

There is also a decent chance of Google making Android closed source in the medium term anyway, but the last several releases of Android have not exactly added mindblowing features, and I don't have a tremendous amount of interest in whatever kind of enshittified cloud dependent AI infested mess they have planned next.

What is the stupid "freedom fries" thing and how does it compare to the current situation?

What I know of "freedom fries" seemed to me an inconsequential little bit of cosmetic chauvinism, while the current status of things is that the US have decided to strongly oppose Europe in both economic and geopolitical terms.

More correctly, it's obsolete.

It just can't keep up with a reality that is this absurd.

Thanks for your extremely thoughtful and interesting reply to my rather silly comment.

I regret I have only one upvote to give.

The other 40 had to disagree with the majority out of a knee jerk reflex.

Every country in the EU has some system for direct debit payments.

Italy has Bancomat, Germany has EC/Giro, France has Carte Bleue, Belgium has Bancontact/Mister Cash (still have not figured out whether they're supposed to be different or just different names in Flanders and Wallonia), and so on and so forth.

Does the Netherlands not have such a system?

It used to be that people would use these within their own country, but there would be Maestro for payments around Europe.

MasterCard decided to discontinue Maestro for MasterCard Prepaid which has higher fees.

The Germans whined about it a little and said that Europe should have come up with its own payment systems, but nothing came of it.

By now we are also supposed to have SEPA Instant, that should offer Europe-wide bank transfers. I still have not quite understood why a debit card system can't leverage that directly.

That also depends a lot. Often (e.g. on Fairphone) the stock ROM may lag behind way worse than e/OS.

So if a user has reasons to avoid a Pixel, or just wants to improve their privacy without replacing their device, e/OS may be a marked improvement even on security.

Not quite, it requires Play integrity.

Safteynet seems to mostly work.

Whether you knew better or not, I mostly wanted to provide slightly more accurate information for whoever might have been reading the thread.

Actually, no. e/OS includes MicroG, so even most app requiring Google services work just fine. What really doesnt't work is Casting videos to a Chromecast, and anything requiting Play Integrity certification like Revolut.

Give Piquadro a look. They are originally from near Bologna (Italy) though they've gotten so big I can't imagine that they still produce everything there.

Wallets: https://www.piquadro.com/en-de/collections/wallets

And card holders: https://www.piquadro.com/en-de/collections/card-holders

Plenty of options with some style variations.

My last wallet was one of their "blue line" card holders in orange leather. The leather that was great and aged great for 10 years. I replaced it after 10 years of abuse because the pockets were getting a little stretched and the cards were occasionally falling.

Bought another one from them, more wallet-like this time. Let's see if this one beats the 10 years mark. I still have the well-loved old one around if you want pictures.