Howdy fellow lemmings,

I know your collective knowledge is greater than mine, so I have come to you for your wisdom.

My OnePlus 9 is nearing the end of it’s life. The power button doesn’t work or registers a double press (I use tap2wake and tap2sleep instead) and some other parts are hinting that they’re starting to die. Also, something in 915Mhz or 925Mhz seems to be causing random UI reboots at the grocery store. Might be hardware or custom rom related.

I’m looking for something with:

  1. Unlockable bootloader with option for root. I may or may not root this time around, depends on how tailscale to my pihole at home works. I absolutely must be able to strip out the bloat and preferably the google apps as well (though I’d like to keep the option for play store), I’m extremely ad-phobic.
  2. Open hardware that third party developers can properly use. I’m running CrDroid on my OP9 and it’s ridiculously great, but cannot make good use of my camera. There are quality issues, cropping issues, and functionality issues and I’ve experienced similar with other phones I had in the past. Are there manufacturers who publish specs resulting in better 3rd party camera implementations? I would be fine with a more midrange phone, as I don’t play many games, but I need the camera to work well.
  3. A large/active modding scene is appreciated
  4. Bonus points if they don’t advertise a bunch of AI bs that I don’t want or need
  5. Location is USA, though phone can be from anywhere as long as it works. I need at least a few bands to be able to use the phone in Germany.

Can anyone advise on which manufacturers meet my requirements?

My understanding is: OnePlus - unlockable, rootable, custom ROM cameras suck unless the rom uses default op9 camera and it seems that this doesn’t work well with more AOSP-y ROMS

Pixel - varies by manufacturer

ASUS - I’m seeing concerns about unlocking and Roms though it seems they have been good in the past

Nothing Phone - unlockable/rootable

Fairphone - seems ideologically pure, but performance, camera, and battery life may not be awesome

Suggestions and insights are appreciated.

  • Admiral PatrickEnglish
    3•2 months ago

    We have very similar device requirements lol. Though I can’t speak much for the camera portion (I’m not a shutterbug and deal with whatever).

    I just upgraded my trusty workhorse OP3 to a OP Nord N200. It’s a few years old, but that usually helps since the custom ROM support is more mature.

    OnePlus is usually pretty easy to unlock as long as you get an OEM model (e.g. not one branded / sold by a carrier). Been a while, but if you buy an OEM one, I think you can just unlock it without having to request an unlock code. I had to jump through hoops to convert this T-Mobile carrier model Nord into a global version, but after that I was able to unlock the bootloader with just the fastboot command (e.g. didn’t have to request and flash the cust_unlock.bin. Was still carrier-locked to T-Mob, but that’s who I use, so no biggie.

    Similar to what you’re seeing with ASUS, Motorola used to be, but I think their unlocking policy has gone downhill as of late. Haven’t messed with their hardware for a while.

    I haven’t used Nothing Phone at all, but they were contenders (and still are) when I was looking for a successor to my OP3.

    Same assessment of Fairphone: ideologically pure, but other issues ruled them out for me.