[squarefoot]

Speaking of phones, they often are purposely rendered obsolete by preventing them to install OS upgrades or migrating them to other more open OSes long before they break for other reasons. While this is a laudable initiative, sadly it won't be much effective against phones planned obsolescence. Opening hardware specs would be a true giant step against this. Not holding my breath though.

[488643689]

True. I deeply regret not spending idk 70€ more getting an iPhone SE instead of the Moto G5 Plus. Last security update was January 2019, as I got about 2 of 3 years of "support". Somehow I was assuming there was going to be an official lineageOS build. Guess what...

I am now in the situation where I can't bring myself to buy Android again, but don't really have the 500 bucks for the new SE. Honestly, new techy features became the least important factor for decision making for me. Support/security > connectivity > battery > repairability > X.

[627467]

I've found that the best solution is: get (used) previous gen high-end (and popular) that has unlocked bootloader. Being popular means I'll find plenty of parts for repair and likely have options for firmware installs.

I got myself a S8 when S10 was about to come out. Fraction of the price and I can keep updating it beyond Samsung efforts.

I still own a Nexus5 5 which seems to be the target of most non-android OS development effort despite its age.

(Another aspect I try to consider is repairability, which phones such as S8 hardly make it easy which it's fragile curve OLED display)

We're past peak smartphones now, I see no need to run after the latest cpu increase or extra camera so that it takes bokeh better. But that's me.