*In terms of privacy, customisation, camera quality, and battery time.
For the longest time I have only used either iPhone or Samsung. I plan on switching to Android for the next phone I get, but I find that Samsung phones are often too big for me and put too much energy on camera quality (I don’t take many photos). I have started to look into brands such as Nokia and Motorola, and I would like to know what you guys think of them. Additionally, do you suggest any other phone brands aside from them? My biggest priorities are privacy and long battery time. Bonus if the phone can run LineageOS (I have excluded Graphene as they are only compatible with Pixel phones).
Thank you for any answers. Cheers!
Xiaomi and Oneplus have some battery beasts of phones.
Why exclude GrapheneOS? It’s a really good mobile OS, and the creator has given his reasons for only supporting Pixels.
His reasons are – I fantasise Google, I love Big Tech security chips, I believe in West, China is evil, I did not get a billion dollar career out of making a Linux kernel patch so I will whine and harass internet people into liking my worthless custom Android build, hide behind my troll army and scare people into thinking my solution is the only solution to get mobile security.
GrapheneOS is pure snake oil with a disgusting sole developer that believes in pushing corporate Big Tech propaganda, harassing and witch hunting any critics, having a little social media army with sockpuppets to do this, abuses mentally challenged by hiding behind “autism” label (Louis Rossmann has a nice video), falsely claims he was swatted without giving evidence or coverage in local Canadian media and blames everyone from redditors to community mods to YouTubers and so on. It has been 10 months at this point since the claim.
I covered this disease for about 5 years, and it emanates from the same sewer that “security” clowns like Brad Spengler and madaidan do in Linux community. All they do is either push their bullshit solutions or push corporate Big Tech propaganda and hate any FOSS project they think will not worship them.
https://old.reddit.com/r/privatelife/comments/ug9qnc/writeup_criticism_of_rprivacyguides_grapheneos/
One thing GrapheneOS propaganda posters also do is sell you the lie that it is the only thing that can give you any mobile privacy and security. Everything else is a failed joke and this thing is the only thing that works. They go to lengths of telling people to fly to other countries to get a Pixel. https://i.imgur.com/Yv9nvxy.jpg And they make fake claims about buying $1 million Israeli Cellebrite kits and them not working against GrapheneOS’ “Titan” security for bootloader and other kinds of attacks. https://i.imgur.com/woNxPhx.jpg
Are you good bro? You’re putting a LOT of words in somebody else’s mouth and your sources here don’t really back up your argument
Dismissing years of evidence with pseudo intellectual trolling is disgusting. All the evidence is objective and mostly directly quotes the discussed parties. Are you sure you are not smoking stuff?
If you mention Graph<nospam>eneOS, you summon him. Check his history
Conair was always my favorite
Custom ROM support relies a lot on a phone either being unique in some nerdy kind of way or having widespread community interest (especially appeal to Indian consumers since many community developers are Indian). The Google Pixel and Fairphone lines consistently have great support due to the first reason, while cheaper Chinese brands often have decent support for the second reason. Nokia is in a bad position in both respects - its phones are neither interesting or particularly cheap/good value for money - so its support is generally pretty bad.
If you plan to just use a phone with the stock ROM then they are all equally bad when it comes to leakage to Google. However brands that try hard to force you into their heavily modified Android ecosystems like Samsung and Xiaomi are particularly bad for privacy since they have a ton of extra data collection built in that is either forced or suggested to you quite heavily (many features are locked behind additional privacy policies and account logins). You are better off going with something as light as possible in that case. Since you mentioned Motorola, I’ll add that I have a razr 2023 and beyond a few optional apps that I can disable, it is pretty standard Android with no additional data collection or accounts required. Motorola phones can have dogshit software support, though. Like this one I have is less than a year old and it’s already taking them 4 months to push an update.
Don’t exclude Pixel phones so quickly. They are one of the most versatile for custom ROMs, and they check all of your checkboxes. I love my CalxyOS Pixel 6.
The pixel 6 is a heavy POS. I like the 4a. Its refreshingly & reasonably sized
But no SD card slot. ☹
Or headphone jack
I just got a OnePlus 12 and this phone is fantastic. Bootloader is unlocked and you can do whatever you want. Battery is amazing. Charger is insane. Camera is more than decent. Price is very reasonable for what it offers.
For me it has to be Fairphone. They are more expensive than the others to buy new but they are more aligned with openness and free software. They receive updates for a long time, are well supported by CalyxOS, /e/os, Linux mobile OSs etc, are repairable, you can carry extra batteries, usually have an SD card slot and two SIM slots and are more environmentally-friendly than others.
i second getting a fairphone, but look into a second battery or a power bank for heavy use.
i daily a Fairphone 4, has neither the best camera nor the best battery life. but it’s the most repairable and durable phone i’ve owned.
i’ve had extremely good experieces with oneplus phones, dunno about custom ROM support though.
i’ve also heard good things about modern motorola phones, if the ROM support is there it’s worth a shot imo.
OnePlus 6 and 6T had really broad custom Rom support, it is till now one of the best Phones for linux(pmOS) With some Roms you can even relock the bootloader
I am currently using my almlst 6 year old oneplus6 with lineage OS without any real issues
Did you tried DivestOS? Its my favorite Rom for the op6
For Privacy?
Not e2ee. Can be tapped.
Only with physical access, which nowaday nobody does.
I wouldn’t put it past an insurance company.
Nah, just ask the telecoms nicely and they’ll give you whatever stream you want.
If you like, you can try my non root smartphone guide which works with any Android phone from the last 5 years, and even upto phones as old as Android 7 Nougat. (NOTE: Please do not use phones that old for daily driver, they have security risks.)
You can do 99% of the stuff fancy custom Android builds claim to provide without needing to root or unlock bootloader (this one prevents lots of risks alone), as far as privacy or security goes. Sure you may not be able to change your boot screen or use some fancy Xposed mod, but that is the cost of extra security. You can use Wavelet or RootlessJamesDSP without root instead of Viper4Android for sound improvements.
I do have a ranking of phone brands in there that is a bit old, but free of political biases, and still relevant. Your options for a LineageOS compatible phone might be low. Xiaomi and Motorola are good options. Avoid OnePlus if you want to use full 48/64 MP camera resolution, they lock it to their own app intentionally. https://www.celsoazevedo.com/files/android/google-camera/f/post-05/
Not sure what else I could tell, depends on whatever roadblocks you encounter upon research.
If you want a great cameraphone with bootloader unlocking, maybe buy a second hand Xiaomi 14 Ultra in few months?
As I usually unlock bootloader, I just buy cheap Chinese phones from around 100 bucks, right now I’m using a FreeYond M5 5G. Debloated and rooted. Working like a charm.
Edit: I prefer Motorola over Nokia.
Not under your specs but the Sony Xperia line offers a headphone jack + microSD, can be unlocked, & has flagship specs (1 & 5). The 5 & 10 models are also smaller devices that actually fit in one hand too. This characteristic combo does not come in the other models folks are suggesting. Older models have LineageOS for microG support if you want an ungoogled phone (but beware the stock camera app is trash).
i loved my XZ2 Compact SO MUCH and then all the carriers in my country simultaneously dropped voice calling support for it. i’m still so salty
Because we need innovation, even if we got on just fine then
xiaomi has awesome hardware, audio jack, sd slot, even ir blaster.
their privacy policy is bad, but a lot of them have official lineageos (and microg-patched lineage) and it works really really well.
Currently in the process of installing Lineageos on my brothers redmi note 10 pro.
Its a huge pain compared to my phone, mainly because unlocking the bootloader requires an account with his number connected. Then I had to install Windows to use their shitty unlock app, which the requires you to wait up to 30 days for seemingly no reason. Luckily “just” a week for us.
But yeah the hardware is amazing.
yes the unlock process is obtuse as fuck! they do something similar to samsung and their RMM bullshit of having to wait.
luckily after its done they wont bother you again.
Until their cheap manufacturing quality makes them stop working because of a motherboard failure
chinese electronics have come a long way, if you dont get them from the dollar store that is
Check out the Poco X3 Pro motherboard failure, and this is a common issue in a lot of Poco and Redmi phones, the only one that are worth it are the high ends Mi devices, and at that price point you can just buy a Pixel phone
Its actually so good that the redmi note 8 (with lineageos-mucrog) I had before performed basically the same as my pixel 6a
Sony. They still have a headphone jack.
Also asus (at least zenphone)
Headphone Jack club
My assus zenphone is quite good in a compact package and minimal changes to android.
No idea about customisation though.
Be warned that the latest models ASUS removed the ability to unlock the devices
