Hi there, I’m still using a OnePlus 7 Pro as my daily driver, using a Custom rom (YAAP) and the phone is still going strong. But after 7 years, I feel it’s time to get a new phone.
What I care about most: a responsive phone that is going to last a long time, good battery, good enough camera, and possibility to install custom roms in the future. When looking at the second hand prices In the UK, I’ve narrowed it down to two phones, at roughly the same price: OnePlus 13 or Google Pixel 10 Pro.
The Pixel line is known for GrapheneOS, but it seems the OnePlus 13 has a decent community around LineageOS.
What do you think? Any advice for one phone or the other, or perhaps another option I haven’t considered?
As for the comparison between custom ROMs, you mainly have LineageOS and derivatives like e/OS, iodeOS, and CalyxOS, as well as GrapheneOS which is doing its own thing with Pixels (and future Motorola devices)
Base LineageOS is pretty much stock Android without Google services by default (though you can install microG). e/OS focuses more on the degoogling side of things, and they tie in Murena cloud services + their own iOS-like launcher too. iodeOS is another more privacy-focused spin of Lineage, and they have additional controls on content blocking (advertisements, trackers, that sort of thing), and you can optionally enable parental controls too. CalyxOS is a security-focused Lineage spin, though not to the extent of GrapheneOS. They only recently came back from the dead, but they seem like another good option too!
GrapheneOS is an uber secure version of Android, there’s a table online for all the security features that Graphene has over the others, look at those and see if any of them are important to you. They also have a neat feature where apps requiring Google services can be sandboxed and kept separate from the system!
And of course, you also have mobile Linux, which is slowly becoming more usable over time! postmarketOS is the one I’ve tried, but there is also Mobian, Ubuntu Touch, and SailfishOS. I personally like pmOS since it aims to stay close to the mainline kernel, meaning you can install any Flatpak app onto the device (it might not always scale well, but it does open a lot of cool options!)
Thanks for all your advice! I agree the Fairphone is a good option, but I’m not sure I could deal with the lower specs. PostmarketOS is tempting for the future, but it looks like it would need a bit more work until we get there.
To be honest, I think the only one that matters is the cameras, primarily the lack of a zoom lens. The performance is excellent unless you want to do things like Switch or PC emulation (in that case, the OP13 is a no brainer, why are you even considering the Pixel). I also just think the modularity and repairable aspect of it is so awesome!
And you’ll be keeping the phone for a long while, so something that also supports pmOS (like the Fairphone) could make it useful once it is no longer receiving Android updates!