After only 3 short years my Google Pixel 4A is EOL. It still works perfectly fine, but since our entire lives run through our phones I don’t feel safe trusting my bank accounts and so on to a phone without security updates. I feel like I wasn’t quite aware how short the supported time would be when i bought it.

So I gotta get a new one. I don’t really have a lot of requirements. I just need the basics: A camera, headphone jack, USB-C charging and F-Droid (so app side loading). I just watch some YouTube, use lemmy and messaging apps, 3fa, email and so on and if there is something to take a video of photo of I like doing that too. I don’t need NFC or high refresh rate or 3 cameras or wireless charging and I don’t play any phone games so pretty much any phone should work, right?

I was thinking of getting something a bit sustainable and long lasting so I looked at Fairphone but the Fairphone 4 is only supported until 2026 which is not really long and also it’s really expensive for just another 3 years. Looks like there will be a Fairphone 5 soonish? But since the 4 didn’t have a headphone jack the 5 probably won’t either?

So since it looks like a ~6 or 7 year lifespan is just not something that’s available I’ve been thinking why not go cheap? Thus I’ve considered getting the Samsung Galaxy A14 (non-5G). Are there any significant differences with the 5G version? The 5G version has good reviews as far as i can see. Feels a little bad to downgrade to a phone that cannot even record 1080p@60 and to go back to USB 2.0 and 15W charging but whatever.

So I’m open to suggestions, either on the longer lasting side or something cheap yet secure for a couple of years.

  • @[email protected]OPEnglish
    5•1 year ago

    I like the idea of a Linux Phone. I don’t know much about it. My bank’s 2FA probably wouldn’t be supported on that and i do need to have WhatsApp because it’s the default mode of communication for everybody that’s not deeply into privacy, right? What DE would you recommend?

    • @[email protected]English
      5•1 year ago

      Linux doesn’t have good user experience yet(for mobile) like battery management and calls and text so I would advise against it

      try lineageos, it is privacy friendly and gets updates, use opengapps/nik’sgapps if you wanna use bank applications(some won’t run without play services)

      if you like a complete experience with all the pixel features you have now, then user pixel experience rom

      also, don’t use twrp if you don’t intend to change from one rom to another frequently

      meanwhile, you can check out this showcase of a beta build of gnome mobile https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJq8Cq9LixE

    • rodneyckEnglish
      2•1 year ago

      Here are the ones I am looking at;

      • LineageOS
      • GrapheneOS
      • CalyxOS
      • e.foundation

      I think Lineage and e.foundation might be your solution because they use a degoogled verson of android replacing google services with microg. This allows the os to be fully compatible with all the apps.