Sure. You define what is decent enough for you. I mostly wrote that because there's very old phones in those lists and some don't support recent Android versions, which might be a problem if an app requires a somewhat recent Android version. Also something like a very old Motorola will be shuggish, not support 5G, have a potato camera by today's standards... It's a bit tricky to hit the sweet spot and then also get something with good support by some custom rom.

And new phones below 100€ tend to be very basic, have the cheapest display available etc...

Go on, then. Now you got me curious.

My next words are going to sound as obnoxious but what does define a phone as decent?

Used market in my country is simply ridiculous; people are asking for used phones as if they were new. The people I know all use their phone until end of life.

I need something that can take a visible picture from less than a metre away, has a flashlight function, can handle WhatsApp and a screen large enough I can use to read documents on it and look at aerial photos. Nothing special. And I need it cheap. It is going to be outside, going in and out of pockets, handled with dirty hands, etc.

I have a Fairphone in my eye for personal use, hopefully sooner than later, but that is a purchase I want to make to last me for as much as possible. This is not the case.

I can tell you one as well.

Thank you.

Google plans to introduce restrictions on installing applications by developers who have not proven their identity to Google, which is neither

• "Locking" in the sense that you can't turn it off. The process they describe is obnoxious, an unreasonable imposition on your ability to use your device as you see fit, and likely to result in some open source developers abandoning the platform, but "locking" is too strong. The link answers what I think you're asking, which is how to allow installing whatever apps you see fit.
• A requirement to use Google's store. Many FOSS apps for Android are from developers registered with Google. If it's in the Play Store as well as F-Droid or the developer's website, they're already registered.

I suppose you could try to buy some of those phones second hand, or refurbished?! Or maybe ask one of the friends who get a new phone every 2 years if they sell their old phone to you... I mean it's not easy to get a halfway decent phone for less than 100€. Something like a Samsung A52 should do, though? They're 75-100€ and LineageOS claims to support the device.

Other option is to not get a second phone and use Android's work profile to confine the work-related apps to a seperate "container".

To what I've read, Google will be locking access to users installing non App Store applications.

My current personal phone is already as much customized as I can manage but needing to buy a new one, although for work reasons, I want to keep using the same software I already use.

I don't understand your question. You write that you've been running FOSS applications from F-Droid for years, and you ask how to do that. It seems like you already know how to do that.

I'm looking at spending less than €100. Moving into a degoogled phone for my personal use is an objective but not now. Can't afford it. Hence my question for how to keep running FOSS applications on any android phone.

Oh, the stories I could tell you.

If you need your phone to do your work, the company needs to supply it to you.

My work provides me a phone. If yours doesn't and you need one, keeping 2 separate phones would be ideal. I'm not sure if your work requires any IT access on your phone but, I refuse to allow a company to have remote control of my personal phone.

My personal phone is a pixel 8 with Graphene OS. I use sandboxed Google play with an gmail specifically for my phone. In a private space I have my gmail that has my Google drive that I still need occasional access to. Otherwise almost everything else is FOSS.

You can also have a look at the table of supported hardware of your favorite aftermarket ROM. And pick a cheap (current) phone from that list. At least WhatsApp runs just fine on my GrapheneOS phone and my other device with LineageOS. Some other proprietary apps break in weird ways, though. But I think replacing the operating system is kinda necessary to properly make it stop forwarding data to Google.

I'm mostly asking because apps such as Signal allow you to record voice messages but have no settings or tweaks for it, making audio inaudible if you're on the street. Do you perhaps have a suggestion for any audio/video editor for android that includes NC in post?

For recording you want to do noise cancelling in post, not realtime. Tenacity's noise reduction works really well. Better to have a clean environment in the first place though.

hey can you confirm that the original unmodified boot.img doesn't return failed while the new one does?

I don't really want more corporate spyware on my phone from Google or my carrier or whoever.

It's not on your phone, nor is it spyware. You call a number to access carrier voicemail. If you're worried about them listening to your calls you may as well just not call anyone.

You could always let provider voicemail take over. Or, you know, miss a call.

Greater digital independence. I currently use Voxist, which is... fine.

I don't really want more corporate spyware on my phone from Google or my carrier or whoever. I'd prefer something FOSS, and private. That means on-device (or self hosted, but I don't even know how that would work.)

You should research this neat thing called "Other People"!

What would be the advantage? You could get the voicemail when you have service and then listen to it even if you don't. But how often does anyone need to do that?

In the Pixel version of the service, the call goes to the carrier's voicemail service. Inconvenient, but it's better than missing the message altogether.

Thanks, I'll check this out!

Exactly my thinking. I'm old enough to remember buying those tiny cassette tapes.