Then samsung galaxy a35.

Samsung phones nowadays are one of the best software support on every budget, starting with the A15 4G (~150€) with 5 years to the flagship, S24 ultra with 7 years.

Samsung galaxy A15 5G, Cheap phone (~180$), micro-sd, headphone jack, good software support (4 OS updates, 5 years security updates), good battery, 1080p amoled 90Hz 800 nits.

I just use jerboa

Snowflake/bridge is used when you do not want the authorities/ISP know, you are using tor or because it might be blocked (like on contries with censorship). When you are running snowflake/bridge you are helping these users. For the contrary, if you use a normal tor relay, they(ISP, authorities, who ever is watching your connection) know, but they do not know what you are doing.

Telegram, syncthing or upload to your cloud (onedrive, google drive, dropbox, whatever you use) and sharing the link. If you are near your friend and both have android, use nearby (like airdrop but on android).

I just use jerboa it’s foss.

A i2p or i2pd router

I would say debian but as others said, are you on hopping distros? Do you have any problem with fedora 39?

Debian 12 with your favorite DE, I use XFCE

Not for China. For example nytimes.

Debian 12 with xfce

In my servers I use debian 12, but I think a good balance (stability & up to date packages) would be linux mint in my opinion.