It seems that the motherboard is dead, and that it’s a common issue with the 5a and I “should’ve known better,” despite it being impossible to find decent information on phones these days.
I got it because it was the last Pixel with a headphone jack, and because it had good official LineageOS support. But I compromised: giving up the SD slot was tough for me, and now that I’ve been burned by not having one (I typically auto-backup my Signal history and other things to the SD card) I don’t want to get another phone without it.
But the landscape seems bleak. The vast majority of phones that are officially supported by LineageOS are Pixels. It’s impossible to find easy information on which phones have non-official LOS ROMs. Search results are useless these days, and I also keep running into an issue where after researching a phone for half an hour I discover that it has some arcane process to unlock the bootloader that doesn’t always work, and the forum posters imply that the purchasers “should’ve known better.” I’m just at my wit’s end.
If anyone can suggest something that has decent deGoogled ROM support with the following features, I’d be very grateful:
- OLED screen (a must-have for my photosensitivity)
- SD card slot
- I am willing to give up the headphone jack in order to expand my options
My reason for advocating for no rooting and unlocking is the same as madaidan, Micay and these other people (yes I agree with few basic things they say), so my non root smartphone guide is going to work well. It applies to every single Android phone since Android 9, and any phone you get nowadays will have 3-5 years of official security updates. Just get any Android you want instead of limiting yourself to some brand because someone told you something. All of the mainstream ones are solid and secure enough for regular usage and threat actors being yout mischievous friends, nosy wife, that tech whiz kid or hackerman friend. Even police cannot do much in most countries, unless they use tools like expensive Israeli Cellebrite kits reserved for high profile criminals.
If your enemy is a state actor or government, I do not think any smartphone will help you. Those require different ways of using devices, and less reliance on phones. You will need a computer, an OpenWRT router and certain type of secure OS like TailsOS for that, which I doubt is your daily need.
TLDR just get any decent Android phone, debloat it, do steps I recommend in my guide, harden it that way and you have eliminated 99% of your problems without the inconvenience, risks and complications. https://lemmy.ml/post/128667 Go through it, you will love it.
I want to say I do not agree with most of madaidians post but this one seemed logical is all. I totally understand phones are just not something someone who is an anarchist or activist should even carry lol.
Thank you for your input I have been reading your guide and it is exactly what I need for this threat model I pretty much already do everything minus a few things which I never thought of. I am a privacy enthusiast who likes to understand how my shit works and a very noob self taught programmer/hacker (idk what I’d call myself, just want to understand the stuff im using to protect myselfl ) I have so many questions about the other set up and will be joining your matrix to pick your brain about a few products and software hope you dont mind lol
And I want to finish I’m sorry if I offended you. I too dont like listening to people telling me to use a certain OS and phone but researching this has been hard so thank you for your well written guides