I have been using xiaomi phones for a long time now, for most of them the (xda) community eventually had great ROMs that (eventually) worked without problems or with very little.

Though these days I need a working phone so I didn’t bother with my (Mediatek) Note 8 Pro - last time I looked phones with these chips were a lot harder and more dangerous to flash then the Qualcomms I had before (loved my Xiaomi A1 for that tinkering with Ressurection Remix).

So I am looking for an investment - a device I won’t have to replace for another ~6+ years but I really want my device to do mostly what I would expect, without any snooping or other privacy shenannigans - I know xiaomi is probably the worse choice for this but their hardware specs were always the best for the price and were generally easy to flash.
I don’t like pixels - they are too expensive for the hardware it offers, at least in my country.

Thank you for any tips in advance.

Update: iPhone is a no go for me because of the walled garden - I am a software developer by trade and hobbyist, I like to have the possibility of cracking the device open, both HW and SW wise. I am willing to trade the longevity of the device for this.

  • random65837@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    2 years ago

    My partner’s 4a isn’t even 3 years old yet and it’s clear that Google does not backtest any of their software updates on older hardware either.

    What’s not working right on it? My 4a runs all the apps for my IoT crap and home automation and its had zero issues. That said, you know theyre being EOL’d next month, so from that point on, who knows. Probably have to go custom ROM on it once the security patches stop.