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.
If you are looking for a generic phone with good privacy and usability I would highly recommend a Pixel with Graphene OS. If you’ve never flashed a phone before, you can install Graphene within a web browser and never need to do any of the more complicated flashing stuff like most other setups require. It also allows you to optionally install Sandboxed Google Play Services (on the main profile or isolated on a second one), letting you access normal apps while still having some of the privacy and performance benefits of an otherwise de-Googled phone.
And from what I’ve seen, Pixels are probably the friendliest to other custom OSes as well.
Thank you. Which Pixel models would you recommend considering cost, compatibility, and benefits? I estimate I could get around €700 from selling the iPhone 15 128GB.
Depends on your price point, but the 8a might be a good middle ground. It’s got the 8 year update support and is second to newest so it’s a tad cheaper.
This is the best option for buget-ish, easy to flash GrapheneOS and 7 years (6 more now) of firmware updates. You can get the 256GB version for around 500 dollars, which should translate to around 460 euros. The 158GB version is only 50 dollars less, so not worth skimming on that, in my opinion.
I recently got a 7a for $300, quite expensive for me but imo worth it. Maybe 8a, after the release of 9/9a, would also fall into a similar price, with 7a getting to $200 eventually.