Whenever I buy clothes they always end up getting holes quickly, I burn through socks fast, my bags keep breaking, my phones magically shit themselves and my chargers melt. I'm sick of everything being a wear part and I'm wondering where people get things that last.
Yeah it really depends on how much you want those ROMs. I've had good luck with 2 Pixels but I 100% believe you that it's probably cheaper to buy another one than to fix one most of the time.
I haven't really found a phone that is popular and recent and friendly enough to ROMs, unfortunately. I also used to get Samsungs but they've made it difficult to install ROMs for many years now. I kind of just try to make a phone last 3-5 years and accept that it's gonna break some time around then.
ha we are on the same trajectory. Used to have samsungs for about a decade, I bought the same model (A5?) twice in a row because I lost the first one and it was doing fine for me with whatever ROM I was using at that time.
The thing with pixels is that some ROMs (like CalyxOS, which is really good) only work on them because of technical reasons I don't understand. So the shitty support is extremely frustrating.
Last year I had to replace my last functional pixel it was so much BS trying to find one that actually had an unlocked bootloader, then screens broke immediately (2 phones in a row broke on the first bump after having them less than 1 week vs the 3a which I literally dropped hundreds of times) and prohibitive to repair. Oh and because they are not very popular, there aren't as many cases available for them as for other models. I ended up settling on a phone that doesn't work properly because I just got tired and everyone was annoyed at me for being unreachable.