It seems like the least-worst option is Samsung Exynos -> Lineage -> No GoogleCrutches -> F-droid.
Still a fucking dumpster fire. Alas, here's to hoping pmOS (or the like) actually goes somewhere.
I'll have to look into microG. My plan was just to avoid attractive nuisance apps on my everyday phone, and stick with stuff from F-droid. But then of course eg traveling puts one in a different mode of just needing to get a problem solved on the go [1].
It is a bit worrying that microG's first listed feature is augmenting perfectly-fine GPS location.
The split with Lineage seems annoying, for both practical and long term considerations. From a quick reading, it seems like Lineage is being stubborn and preserving the paradigm where Google is trusted more than the purported owner of the device.
Seems like one would definitely have to use a VPN with microG, lest Google continue to infer social metadata from whatever IP address (ie wifi network) one was connecting from [2].
[0] I wouldn't mind say running Waze for the highway part of routine trips (with a nonce account of course), to report highway robbers and other hazards.
[1] Which is how these surveillance companies get us over the barrel, but I digress.
[2] It seems like the best solution here would be some sort of headless "wifi condom" that would connect to 3g/4g/wifi networks, do the VPN stuff, and present a single constant wifi network.
Librem5 is definitely something to watch: https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/
I'm also watching the Pyra, but development is super slow: https://pyra-handheld.com/boards/pages/pyra/
Otherwise I just keep using Nokia N900, which replaced my old Openmoko Neo Freerunner. I'm waiting for my preordered Neo900, Librem 5 and Pyra.
You don't need this crap.
1. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/Global-version-Xiaomi-Redmi-...
This rules out an awful lot of the offerings, but at least there's Exynos (and Atom). I'd imagine the open-security-focused solution of the future will eventually push all that proprietary-algorithm-intensive hostile crap into something like a mifi.
there's already very few that have an unlockable bootloader
I had actually considered it (if for nothing else than the more coherent target to be hacked on), but am wary of just heading towards a different strong attractor for top-down control.