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.
I was looking at Note 12 Pro (+) both design and HW looks good to me but xda forums for this model seem rather barren, it does seem people are trying to flash Lineage but there wasn’t much else.
The 12 Pro is Mediatek SOC. They don’t open source their chipsets. https://xdaforums.com/t/research-supported-mtk-custom-roms.4265209/
That being said… Check out GSI roms and DSU. I’ve not tried it out tho.
The 13 Pro is a Qualcomm SOC.