My old phone’s battery has given up the ghost. Can someone recommend a current generation smartphone, preferably Android, that strikes a good balance between usability and privacy? I’m also fine with an Android phone that’s not that great with privacy out of the box, but has good support for third party ROMs like Lineage or Copperhead. Even better if the phone’s chassis and battery can just unscrew so I can replace it myself.
I’ve looked into the Pinephone and other Linux-only phones, but I’d like to wait until the app ecosystem is more mature. At least with Android I can use the F-droid apps for privacy consciousness.
This happened to me a few months back. Here’s the link to the thread, if you’re interested. There are some good suggestions in there, but since I couldn’t find any on the used market, I bit the bullet and went with the Fairphone 3 instead. It recently received official support from LineageOS, too (link)!
If you want a phone with good ROM support, then you’ll probably be looking at Pixel phones and to a slightly lesser degree, Galaxy phones. Just be forewarned that the most recent models most likely don’t have 3.5mm jacks, SD card expansion slots or replaceable batteries.