As long as you’re not in the Russian sphere of influence and don’t expect to be targeted by state actors, it’s worth it to at least look into ios devices. The parts availability and very long support window make em a no brainer in the us, but things are different depending on where in the eu a person is.

Seriously. I have no love for apple the company but I handle a lot of phones working on em and they’re usually the better choice if a person can get away with it. Part of it is the install base, part of it is the sheer volume of devices out there, part of it is the relatively small number of different ones and part of it is that their higher “real” and perceived value. The closest analogy I can think of is this: my local transmission shop does much more work on f150s than Kia’s.

If you expect to deal with the police do not get a phone with face unlocking except apple or Samsung. Even if you don’t plan on using it. Those two brands use multiple cameras to authenticate and hardware to secure the stored secrets so even if your phone gets attacked successfully the attacker can’t authenticate as you using that biometric data. You need both because multiple cameras means the attacker can’t use a picture to fake it out and hardware storage means they can’t use a software man in the middle attack to fool it (they can use a hardware man in the middle attack though, or just point the phone at your face).

You talked about dual sim in another comment and unless you specifically need SIM cards, like, your work is going to give you a sim and will explicitly not use esim, most of the time it’s gonna be done through carrier esim provision. Esim is where they just push the data for the network to your device through the network. You can have as many esims as you like on most devices, so the limit is your radio region. Some people will say that SIM card is more secure because you can take them out, but the phone doesn’t need a sim to use the network, just to authenticate with the carrier and idk of any phones that do cards but not esim which can be pushed out by the carrier anyway so there’s not really that layer of security.

It’s possible that your carrier only does card sim and won’t do esim but idk.

You also talked about microsd in another comment and that’s still available but less common. Probably by the time we each get anew phone it’ll be removable battery level. If you end up getting one with it think on how you’re gonna back up your data when it’s gone.

If you have a pair of corded headphones you like, don’t unnecessarily narrow your choices by looking for a 1/8” jack. The adapter cables work great and having a “safe” break point in the wire is something I wish we’d carried over from minidisc.

E: a little more on the 1/8”/3.5mm jack: I hated giving that up at first too, but a bunch of stuff I had been doing with it actually got better when it went away. Normal listening with corded headphones uses an adapter cable, and it’s nice to have that break point for when the line gets snagged. I never saw any quality drop, but there’s always the dedicated dac for using a phone on the stereo. They make some really good recording I/o breakout boxes and I’m not even restricted to the bandwidth of the phones audio interface for using the phone as a little improvised scope if I use one of those (be careful doing this).

e2: a little bit on the possible upcoming eu replaceable battery rules: it's probably not worth it to just get something that'll tide you over until the new eu battery regulations come into effect in the hopes that you get a sweet new phone with a replaceable battery. all phone manufacturers have gotten frankly fantastic at making waterproof devices and they did it by having no big multi-use gaskets. a replaceable battery is gonna be that exact type of seal and the first few are gonna suck for a few reasons. they're gonna be figuring out how to design em and manufacture em and still meet customers' expectations of being able to drop the thing in the toilet, make calls in a downpour, etc. they're gonna be figuring out exactly how good of a job they have to do at a variety of battery and device attributes to have the phone and battery last long enough to maintain brand reputation, and they're gonna be actively working to change users expectations to match what they can make and have brought to market.

for people like you and i who use phones as long as we possibly can before replacing them, this is the exact wrong time to jump on new models with replaceable batteries. best to stick with existing models with replaceable batteries or ones without em and get the tools to do the job. i tend towards that second category after experiences just like yours with the fairphone.

no more edits now.