My venerable Moto G5 has developed multiple independent problems. Thus I’m in the marked for a new phone and I’m looking for suggestions.

I don’t have many requirements, but those are non-negotiable:

  1. Must have a headphone jack
  2. Must have expandable storage (AFAIK that still means an SD card slot)

Bonus points for:
3) a large battery
4) not being from a chinese company
5) not having that ridiculous array of cameras on the back that seems to be common nowadays (I do want to be able take photos, but they don’t have to be good)
6) not having a selfie camera that is built into the screen
7) being a rugged / outdoors phone (which seems to correlate with point 3)
8) allows for an alternative OS, or maybe even comes with one preinstalled.

Price doesn’t really matter beyond me not wanting to get ripped off.

I already looked around a bit and found a couple of options:
a) Volla Phone X23: German company, comes with the option of their Android spin-off or Ubuntu Touch. Even has a replaceable battery. But the screenshot of the spin-off don’t look like it would be for me and Ubuntu Touch doesn’t seem to be quite there yet
b) AGM H5 Pro: from Portugal, a rugged phone, but only comes with Android 12 and I found no information on which version it can updated to. Also since it’s kinda niche, I guess I can’t put a non-google Android on it.
c) Moto G56: upgrade from what I have now. Back then I chose a Motorola because I was told I comes with the least amount of garbage pre-installed, is this still true?
I couldn’t find it in the list of models LineageOS supports, but since a lot of other models are listed I attribute that to the G56 being new, right?
d) hopefully you can give me some better options

Thank you!

    • MalReynolds@piefed.socialEnglish
      1·
      15 hours ago

      Automated rotation of a large music library on a weekly basis via syncthing, I prefer an offline solution, (but navidrome is there if needed) ~150Gb containing all my playlists and a random selection of other albums keeps me well stocked with old and new. That leaves plenty for taking photos / video (which all gets backed to immich anyway). I don’t consume video on tiny screens. 256Gb is plenty for me with this system, 128 would probably do fine.

      I am however thinking of hacking together a RasPi type device with a nvme drive, good audio and a backlit ePaper screen and perhaps GPS (music, books and maps covers 85+% of my use case, a standalone camera would get another 10+% ) which would reduce my need for a personal surveillance device being on significantly. Project suggestions gratefully received.