this post was submitted on 16 Nov 2024
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Privacy
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First, don't buy new phones. You're paying a massive premium to be first. Especially since you're going to flash a rom, which has a little risk anyway (I've bricked phones by flashing, though not for years).
I just upgraded from a 2017 flagship to a Pixel 5 (only because my cell company decided to stop it working on their network, when I can throw a different Sim in and it works fine). I was able to buy 3 Pixel 5's for less than you paid for your new phone. Which means I have a daily driver, a hot spare, and a test device for a little over $400.
If my daily breaks, I pickup my spare and swap the SIM, since I keep both phones synced with Syncthing. I don't even have to login to anything because that's all done. (I had 4 functional devices of my 2017 phone, they had become so cheap).
So pick a 1-2 year old model that you like the features, and pay far less for it.
Before (finally) coming to the pixel, I would look at the Lineage device list, then check those phones out at gsmarena.com and phonearena.com to see which I'd prefer, because Lineage has the broadest device support that I've seen.
Today I run DivestOS, a fork of Lineage with some changes to a few things. I forget now exactly what I preferred (I'd have to pull up my comparison spreadsheet), but average battery consumption is a staggering 0.5% per hour, with microg services installed and a couple apps using it. Consumption average increases to about 4% per hour when I'm doing a lot of intensive stuff - copying files over the network, using nav, watching a video, etc.
I do understand where you're coming from. I never buy a phone without a somewhat good discount (which I got on this one). As for the risk flashing, quite frankly the cases of breaking are so far and few in between that for the odds given nowadays, I am OK in doing this on a brand new pixel (for other phones that require unlock first and all that jazz I do not try it on brand new).
As for the lineage os bit: lots of devices, but the lack of unlock for me is a no no. If it was an older device without important stuff such as banking sure, I would totally go for it.
EDIT: where you read unlock I actually meant root. Most phones cannot be unlocked unless you have root
I don't think this is right.
Unlock related to bootloader. root is different.
Haven't touched other phones in a while, so there is a chance this is not correct. However, I do remember trying to have my old s10e to have anything else that is not Samsung ROM. Its a nightmare.
As far as I recall, root has never been required to flash a phone.
This is because flashing occurs at the firmware level, while root, again, is a function of the installed OS.
Yeah rooting was a thing in mid 2010s, it changed since then. you don't need to root to flash a room. unlocking bootloader is enough.
samsung went out of their way to fuck over custom rom community.
oneplus did something similar around oneplus 9. i think they were relockable for a bit then oneplus pushed out firmware update to block it or some such thing.
this is how we ended up with pixels as only viable "mass market" choice. I am sure google would shut it down if it was not used as reference model for devs.
watch them close this route for us soon enough.
They are getting annoyed with us but they got ad blocker fight on their hands and anti trust ruling so they got to play coy for now.
For the reasons you mention, I really REALLY hope pinephone goes far and we have something else viable on the long run
Unlock has nothing at all to do with root.
Root is dependent on unlocking, not the reverse, as root is part of the installed OS.
it is usually a good idea to buy the flagship of the last year at summer. I did that and never regretted it