this post was submitted on 06 Jun 2023
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Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Start with an android phone from a vendor that runs a very stock ROM. Go with Google for fast updates, teracube or fairphone for long term support and sustainability, or Nokia for a good solid privacy respecting company (not perfect, but pretty good). From there prefer open source play store apps. When you're ready, try F-Droid.
Generally I recommend starting small and escalating
Second this. Start with a Pixel or a Fairphone and go from there. Pixels come with all the bits needed to build your own OS and so are supported by most aftermarket Android-based OSes. Using open source apps where possible is also a fairly significant part of the equation. The latest gen Pixels have 5-year official software support. Even if you stay on the stock OS, they won't turn into e-waste too soon.
This is the best way. Messing with roms can be a lot of work and even if you want to transition to a more opensource ecosystem unfortunately in life youre going to sometimes need those closed source apps(like if you need to do banking stuff for example).
You can download fdroid and sideload all the open source apps you want and when you need to use a closed source you arent locked out of it.
That's what I do. And yeah. If you use your phone for work stuff (email / MFA) there's no chance in hell your IT manager is going to be okay with you having a rooted phone with a custom ROM with third party apps from an unverified source like F-Droid.
Unless you can afford to have two phones, one for work and one for personal, be ready to make some compromises
In my view, since I'm already switching to a different ecosystem from apple, I might as well pick the one I want in the end since I'm not really familiar with stock android in the first place. Tercube looks good, though it doesn't support my carrier, hurm..
Yeah but to get to a special ROM you're gonna need to familiarize yourself with a litany of other tools while your phone is still not familiar and usable. If you want to start out going super technical, more power to you, but for me I always need to take on new information slowly to keep from losing all daily productivity
That does make sense what you're saying though. If I'm not in the best mental focus at the time it might not be best to delve too deeply into it. If I get maybe an older but compatible phone I can test without actually transferring my phone number over.
https://e.foundation/e-os/ can just buy these. Essentially LineageOS with some tweaks
Galaxy S9 is something like $100 on eBay and well supported