I am planning to buy a new phone since my current 6-year-old one’s screen is getting problematic.

I don’t live on the European or American continents, and my country is rather short on choices—we only have Samsung, Apple, Huawei and other Chinese brands.

Importing is not an option because the prices rise to five to tenfold, and I cannot afford that since the already available ones are more expensive than the rest of the world here.

Which available brands and models can I easily DeGoogle and dodge other big corporation bulls?

  • monovergent@lemmy.ml
    3·
    4 months ago

    Whatever you do, don’t buy Huawei or Honor for degoogling. I wasted a whole day trying and failing to unlock the bootloader on mine.

    edit: modern Huawei phones don’t include Google services. Still nigh impossible to unlock the bootloader on them if you want a ROM without Huawei’s equivalent of Gapps.

    • thatsnomayo [he/him]@lemmy.mlBEnglish
      3·
      4 months ago

      Oof you’ve gotta read the wiki for that stuff it’s hard being a FOSS hardliner & a China fan while they’re speedrunning thru the past few decades of western chip + device + telecom + software development

      • monovergent@lemmy.ml
        2·
        4 months ago

        From what I’ve read, Xiaomi is decent, just make sure people have documented the bootloader unlocking process (often on XDA forums) for the model you are looking to buy. Granted, I’ve yet to use a Xiaomi phone myself.

        • asdasd201@lemmygrad.mldeleted by creatorOPEnglish
          2·
          4 months ago

          Xiaomi is rather consumer-friendly compared to Samsung and Apple here—better customer service, frequent discounts, etc. I think I’ll stick to them.