I have been using xiaomi phones for a long time now, for most of them the (xda) community eventually had great ROMs that (eventually) worked without problems or with very little.
Though these days I need a working phone so I didn’t bother with my (Mediatek) Note 8 Pro - last time I looked phones with these chips were a lot harder and more dangerous to flash then the Qualcomms I had before (loved my Xiaomi A1 for that tinkering with Ressurection Remix).
So I am looking for an investment - a device I won’t have to replace for another ~6+ years but I really want my device to do mostly what I would expect, without any snooping or other privacy shenannigans - I know xiaomi is probably the worse choice for this but their hardware specs were always the best for the price and were generally easy to flash.
I don’t like pixels - they are too expensive for the hardware it offers, at least in my country.
Thank you for any tips in advance.
Update: iPhone is a no go for me because of the walled garden - I am a software developer by trade and hobbyist, I like to have the possibility of cracking the device open, both HW and SW wise. I am willing to trade the longevity of the device for this.
You have two options for a phone that will last 6+ years and really it’s only one as tensor won’t last that long
Iphone and pixel.
For 5 years you can go Samsung and potentially OnePlus though that’s also chinese.
If your willing to rely on the community Poco f5 or f5 pro is probably your best bet .
But honestly iphone is gonna have the most longevity both in terms of software support, replacement parts availability and process being able to keep up for that long (a series chips are by far the fastest.)
Furthermore I think it’s quite delusional to think a phone will last that long just due to sheer usage dropping etc but that’s my two cents .