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?

  • @smeg@feddit.ukEnglish
    1•7 months ago

    Appreciate the very, very detailed response, but I’m just a guy who wants a secure device, I don’t really want to go down this red-string rabbit home or join anyone’s side in this shit-flinging match!

    • @TheAnonymouseJoker@lemmy.ml
      -1•7 months ago

      There is no rabbit hole, everything is presented with solid evidence and proper notes. And it should take a couple hours for all of this to be read, if you wanna spend a weekend or a night. I say that is reasonable for 5 years, and a very nice way to enlighten yourself with the danger “security zealots” present towards degoogling/decorping, whitewashing Big Tech evils, our privacy and tech freedom concerns. They are arguably the most prominent, yet covert Big Tech shills you will find in privacy community, and I am one such non-conspiratorial non-nutjob privacy person who took the pain to do this, because nobody else did.

      I would like you to go through these parts in second link, it is very interesting regarding security claims.

      GRAPHENEOS ALTS CLAIM CELLEBRITE KITS CANNOT EXFILTRATE DATA FROM PIXELS ON YOUTUBE COMMENTS

      GRAPHENEOS MATRIX CHAT TELLING PEOPLE TO FLY TO OTHER COUNTRIES TO GET A PIXEL IF NOT AVAILABLE DOMESTICALLY

      Also going through this comment chain might help regarding seeing if their security even means anything compared to other AOSP forks. Takes 10 minutes.

      https://lemmy.ml/comment/5414704