I mean we all know about the sideloading restriction thing. So I wanna explore alternative OSes, just gathering info, not sure if I'll even end up buying another phone (currently have a Samsung as a main phone, and in North America they are bootloader locked).
Like I know Graphene OS is supposedly more secure, but is it worth paying so much more for a phone? And used phones are kinda sketchy btw, most originate from a carrier so unlockability is in question (I'm not playing the buy/return "lootbox" game lol, so much hassle and its never guaranteed when a seller would even accept a return).
The moto I was looking at apparantly was on CalyxOS's supported list, but they suspended development for some reason, so Lineage is the only Custom ROM left other than Graphene.
Graphene seems cool, but idk if its really that much better. Getting a pixel is directly giving Google the most money, and I don't feel so good about that after they closed sourced Pixel device tree codes (or whatever that thing was called that they closed sourced), and then they killed sideloading, feels wrong to be buying a pixel right now. So that leaves me with just Lineage. And I could get a much cheaper phone too going Lineage.
So TLDR: If you were to recommend a phone to someone, which would you recommend? Expensive phone for Graphene, or Cheap phone and just use Lineage? Or something else?
The tradeoff of buying an old pixel is that their batteries are smaller than budget phones of 2024-25.
The tradeoff of buying Motorola is that their bootloaders are not readily unlockable and you risk not being able to do this if you buy too old.
I think a nice middle option is Nothing Phone, with bootloaders unlockable without requesting codes and average support in custom ROMs (Lineage only supports the 1 and 2, iodé and /e/ I believe support the 2a, 3 series and the CMF Phone)