A lot depends what you want from life. Here are my own criteria. I always check the SAR info and never get one that's not very low, as in under 0.5 head and body. I also avoid anything 5G enabled. Removable battery, even better but getting hard to find. If it has front camera and fingerprint sensor I cover them with tape or nail polish before I ever switch them on for the first time. And these days a good whack of memory is not a bad idea. Beyond that I couldn't care less about one droid or another. In fact next time I'll take a look at Pinephone or other rivals and try and get Google out of my life finally. David Bowie said they are the Illuminati and he was right.
Discussion
ps. I've always hated everything I owned made by Samsung, with the exception of an original Galaxy S2 back in 2012. Their phones may be okay but everything else they make is nice and shiny but overrated functionally and overpriced.
You can also mod your phone by installing a de-Googled OS. It's cheaper and more functional than any de-Googled phone you can buy off the shelf.
Yes, good point. So far the people I know with de-googled droids have had some problems as well as limited choice, plus weren't quite as de-googled as they had hoped. But these things are getting better all the time.
I do have a couple of lovely button phones also: but beware, most are in fact droids also. If going that route you need to check carefully. One thing they don't do well is apps for payment, so my POS needs brought me back to Android. I have a Nokia G21 which was cheap, low SAR and the battery lasts AGES! Honestly a few more sensors would be nice. But it does what I need it for just fine.
And that's the other thing: paying and extra $1000 for a phone gets you very little additional happiness!
What do you guys mean by de-googled android? Is that like graphene or is it a specific os?
Graphene OS is probably the best way to go if you want to de-google your phone, yes.
Not entirely sure of this. There are a number of attempts to make a Linux OS that can just replace Android on phones. I haven't gone there because the tech knowledge required is considerable and they sound temperamental, and they don't work on most devices either. One recent notice doing the rounds was that De-googled Androids were trying to update themselves to Android 12, which makes me wonder how de-googled they really are.
Some phones are designed for other OSs, but I have no special knowledge on that.
Things you can search:
Purism
Librem
Pinephone
Ubuntu touch
The other guy might be right about Graphene, check it out by all means. Really none of this is my field - I just like typing ;-)
Remember that a regular Android settings can make a huge difference to privacy, and there are a number of apps to help, like microphone blockers, location fakers and so on.
Most important of course when it comes to privacy is it is ALWAYS the user not the device that counts the most.
This guy knows his stuff about device security, may be worth a follow:
https://odysee.com/@RobBraxmanTech:6/paranoia.mp4:6?&sunset=lbrytv
I hope that helps.
