Hi everyone,
Having successfully left windows for Linux (Fedora) a few years ago, I thought I’d the same for my phone.
I have a professional iPhone 13 provided by my employer, but I have an old Samsung GT-I8730 lying around.
Sadly, there is apparently nothing (except stock Android) that I could easily install on it.
So I’m kind of looking for a cheap second hand phone that I could get for my birthday in order to try to have a degoogled and deappleified private phone (I’m now using my work iPhone for everything).
What phone should I buy for max 150.- (around 180$) second hand?
Also what OS should I try to install on it?
To be honest, I’m really a rookie in the phone world and I’m not even sure if I’m looking for a degoogled Android phone (/e/os, lineage, graphene) or a linux phone (Ubuntu touch, KDE mobile).
It would be important for me to be able to daily drive the phone. Listening to music and using my banking apps on it would be important features.
So I’m looking for advice regarding all of this and I’m thankful in advance for your help.
Fairphone with e/OS.
You need to first investigate what kind of protections your banking app has, as that will be most likely the largest issue with anything non-stock Android.
Chances are that your banking apps will not work on any OS that isn’t maintained by Google.
GrapheneOS has a sandboxed Google Play that works fine with any banking apps I’ve used. You can also move them to a work profile to segregate them further and still used them.
In my experience it works with most, but one of mine recently decided to implement the “Play Integrity API” which broke it on GrapheneOS
From what I’m seeing on the /e/os website and their list of compatible devices (https://doc.e.foundation/devices), a lot if phones would get « safetynet »(even if I don’t really know what it means).
Pixel is hard to beat. You can get a 5 for about $170. Run Lineage, DivestOS, or Graphene.
Oh is it? It’s one of the cheapest second hand phones I’ve been investigating.
That’s something I don’t understand and would need someone to explain. How can it become end of life on an alternative OS? It’s as if someone was telling me my computer was too old (not not powerful enough) to run Linux.
20240521002024052100
Pixel 4a (5G) and Pixel 5 are end-of-life and shouldn’t be used anymore due to lack of security patches for firmware and drivers. We provide extended support for harm reduction.
https://wiki.postmarketos.org/wiki/Devices
If you want Linux on your phone. But Android is probably easier to use. Something like LineageOS or /e/ works pretty well. I’m not sure what kind of phone to recommend for that.