Must have: SD card, SIM, Good flashing and root capability, Audio port, 4G
Preferred: Removable battery
Not have: built-in AI bullshit
Thxxx
Any specific reason why they should be phones older than 2020?
After 2020 it’s guaranteed to be ugly and dumb. Also I’m buying it used, I want it cheap.
Fairphone
Samsung Galaxy S5 was/is a good device for tinkering. Supports many custom ROMs from CyanogenMod to Lineage to Ubuntu and postmarketOS.
Has a removable battery, 3.5mm audio jack, SD card slot. IIRC it worked fine on 3G, but did not support calls on 4G.
Motorola G100 / Edge S
Aren’t most/all of the newer Motos bootloader unlockable? I’m in the market for a new phone, but not wanting google or apple all up in my shit. Not a fan of pixel phones, so…
Yeah, me aswell.
The Xiaomi Mi A1 from late 2017 had very good ROM/rooting capabilities when I last used it 4-5 years ago. It didn’t have a removable battery though. The second sim slot can function as a microSD card and it has a 3.5 mm audio port.
Checking the LOS website, they say it has support for LOS 20 / Android 13, which is pretty impressive considering the official ROM only went up to Android 9.0. I stopped using the device on LOS 17.1 / Android 10.
Nexus 4
Great little device from 2013-ish and could take a beating. Battery wasn’t too difficult to replace. No SD slot, though.
poco f1 maybe. runs mainline linux
i like my xperia xz1c, but its very hard to replace battery
