I am looking for a new Android smartphone (currently on iOS).
Obviously I read about GrapheneOS as the „Gold Standard“ of alternative OS. But the downside is that it only runs on Pixels. Which is kinda weird to buy a device from a company you want to „boycott“ (de-Google).
On the other hand I kinda like the approach of Fairphone: most parts are easy repairable, parts are available and cheap compared to Google and Apple. But the downside here is that it isn’t supported by GrapheneOS, doesn’t have the most capable hardware for the price and probably won’t get 7 years of updates like the Pixel 8a in comparison.
So that leaves me with a „analysis paralysis“: I have to choose a device and a CustomROM.
/e/OS does seem interesting but I read some comments that it isn’t that secure like GrapheneOS. I don’t need that high-level of security but it should be significantly more than stock Android to be worth all the hassle by installing/using a CustomROM. On the other hand I don’t want to sacrifice every comfort for the sake of the last bit of (theoretical) security.
Did someone go down this path as well recently and can share some experiences? Maybe there is even some better alternative.
I feel the 50 years support claims, whether in hardware or software, should be of little concern; you'll grow tired of it, no one is going to rock the same phone for 10 years, replacing components as they fail and whatever Fairphone's delusion is.
as to concrete recommendations, take a look at Xiaomi phones (Mi/Redmi/Poco/etc.). they ship with a bloated spyware called MIUI which is such a horrific mess on so many levels I can't begin to count the ways it sucks. even moderately competent phones have trouble keeping up with the bloat, they glitch out, drop frames, freeze, etc. so people just get rid of them and upgrade to something snappier. as a consequence, they can be had for cheap on the used market.
the good news is, they have snapdragon models with super competent hardware and a good portion of them have lineageOS support (and by extension, many other derivative OS) - Poco F1 is one of the rare semi-modern phones that also has postmarketOS support.
the bad news is, the bootloader unlock process takes a week, just because; do yourself a favor and don't connect this monstrosity to your LAN while you wait for the timer to expire. also, they're chaotic (to say the least) with their model naming, with zero consistency what each suffix means (T, Pro, etc.) and it's not rare that they do a model "refresh" where they replace snapdragon with mediatek in the "updated" version.