When the iPhone 15 came out, I felt the pressure to upgrade, so I bought the standard model with 128 GB. I’m now experiencing the limitations of their ecosystem, which closed as dolls ass. I’m looking to sell my iPhone 15 and buy two Android phones for myself and my wife. If I could get some extra cash out of it, that would be a nice bonus. I’m not concerned with the fancy cameras or features. I just want something I can manipulate to be private and also install whatever I want, use the common apps everyone uses with no issues, stream movies and TV shows. My main concern is that most phonew from well-known brands, their Android OS are almost as disappointing as Apple products. I think it would be better to get a phone with hardware that is well-suited to a custom Android OS that is well-maintained and known for being reliable, and with a focus on privacy and not bloated. Thank you in advance for your help.
As others have said, the Pixel line is the easiest if you want to have full control over the phone.
There are others, but it will take more effort to get there (I say this after flashing and rooting all my phones since 2010).
Take a look at lineageos.org/devices to see what devices they support, it’s a good approximation of which phones can be boot loader unlocked.
After lots of looking around, I decided to finally jump to Pixel, and I’m running DivestOS (a fork of Lineage with a little bit more tweaked, like sandboxing MicroG).
Once you decide to go down this road, I’d suggest downloading the factory rom image for your phone, and practice flashing it, before trying with a custom rom, just so you have some experience with a known-good image. Plus, sometimes you have to flash back to stock - I just did one the other day because I screwed up the custom rom flash.
Thank you. Which Pixel models would you suggest, factoring in cost, compatibility, and benefits? I expect to get about €700 for the iPhone 15 128GB.
I recently bought a Pixel 8 for 500€, they got cheaper since the Pixel 9 was just released. If you want to save some money you could probably just buy a Pixel 7a which will get updates until May 2028 (vs October 2030 for the Pixel 8). Supposedly the 7 has better battery life than the 8, but in the end it comes down to how long you want to use it.
When you say supported, does that only mean the original (Android) OS will be supported and updated? What does it mean for a different ROM?
Very much appreciated
Whatever you can afford for pixel 8 and above, if possible. Those will be supported for longer.
Thank you