Well, the battery on my Nexus 5X is so worn out that it only lasts about two hours. I'm looking to get a new phone (I.E. no battery wear) which has similar features with regards to having an unlockable bootloader and 3rd party firmware. I'm also very open to the idea of something running an alternate OS entirely (like PureOS, but the Librem 5 is too expensive).
Just wanted to hear your thoughts and suggestions.
The Pixel 4a is an absolutely fantastic phone at a "I don't have to go into medical debt levels of debt to buy one" price. Especially if you liked your Nexus. And Pixels run stock android, have great support, and lots of community support as well so they're easy to unlock and do whatever you want with.
The Zenphone6 is pretty badass of you can get it in your country/state. No front facing camera, just a rear facing on a swivel motor. Battery lasts like 2 days, and it comes with a headphone jack and 256Gigs of storage with space for an SD card.
Be warned though, you need to make sure your carrier supports its antenna. I get terrible coverage where I'm at (which is fine because I don't like people contacting me anyways and have 500Gigs to store media for long trips lol).
I just got a OnePlus and I love it. Idk if it'll still be as good in a couple years (my last phone lasted five), but for now it's great
The Nokia N900 was the best phone ever made. The thing used the apt package manager (same as Debian and Ubuntu), had an FM broadcast band transmitter and could do red/white/yellow composite video output though the headphone jack. You could download movies over bittorrent and plug your phone into the TV to watch them. You could download albums over bittorrent and hijack the sound system at any party without even needing a cable.
I haven't really looked into custom firmwares, can you point me toward a couple of options?
LineageOS is probably the most popular among them, but I have also used CopperheadOS and Sailfish. IIRC there was some controversy surrounding Copperhead though. LineageOS is a descendant of the defunct CyanogenMod.
Just beware that the batteries have a tendency to shit themselves so you'll definitely wanna buy new
I have a queue of old bricks which need to be fixed first, including a phone with honeymoon photos that has a melted short circuiting charging port. :/
Any second hand phone from this list (https://www.ifixit.com/smartphone-repairability?sort=score) from top to bottom
This is gonna sound kind of wild but what if you got a new battery?
also in for this question. i need a durable screen, because silicon-based-lube fingers.
and a fucking headphone jack. and ideally the ability to at least emulate modern android apps for shit like the local cab company's app (because apparently they don't do phone calls anymore)
Remove the Google/government spyware from Android, use an alternative distribution like Lineage. Any phone supported by LineageOS, made within the past six years should be adequate for most purposes.
