Hello there! This is my problem: I’m going to buy a new smartphone, and I’d really like to degoogle myself as much as possible. The idea would be to buy a device compatible with LineageOS, but… Supported devices are usually older models, and often there are newer devices with better specs for the same price, that does not support lineageOS. Is seems a shame to buy a device with lower specs than another one just because of software compatibility. So the alternative would be to buy an unsupported device, unlock the bootloader and debloat it as much as possible, flash privileged fdroid and aurora store on it, install microg, etc… What do you suggest me to do? Is the second alternative a viable option? What other steps should I do if I decide to go that way?

Thanks in advance folks!

Edit:
Thanks to anyone for the great answers! I finally decided to buy a pixel 6 (or 6 pro if I find a good deal) and install a custom ROM on it! GrapheneOS will support it for “only” 3 more years, while other roms like lineageos or divestos will have longer support. What do you suggest? Graphene OS and when support ends switch to another one? O directly use the other one?

  • shabi@lemmy.fenbushi.site
    2·
    7 months ago

    I’m a GrapheneOS user. You can use whichever store you like. Sideloading works too if you want to get stuff directly from GitHub, for example.

    If you use esim, probably better to activate before flashing GrapheneOS. Otherwise, doesn’t matter imo.

    I’d suggest you take a look at the discussion forum. You can ask questions there or just browse and you can probably learn a lot about GrapheneOS there. Also the homepage has tons of info, of course.