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.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    12
    ·
    1 year ago

    Dev = Pixel man. Why go with anything thats not the official development baseline for Android?

    I really want my device to do mostly what I would expect, without any snooping or other privacy shenannigans

    And then we queue GrapheneOS. Once privacy and security are a concern (should always be) then the desicion is easy, and made already.

    • taaz@biglemmowski.winOP
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      5
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      oh yeah I am fully aware Pixel is the best choice for all of this, but until my current phone I was always able to pay less for more (Xiaomi) and have the ROM cake too.

      • sir_reginald@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        5
        arrow-down
        1
        ·
        1 year ago

        the new pixels have 8 years of support so they’ll probably be durable. Maybe change the battery after 4 years and it’ll be as good as new.

      • TwanHE@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        3
        ·
        1 year ago

        Yeah with Xiaomi I really see the phones just for their hardware, better OS is going to be figured out by the community anyways