Any specific reason why they should be phones older than 2020?
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Motorola G100 / Edge S
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Samsung Galaxy S5 was/is a good device for tinkering. Supports many custom ROMs from CyanogenMod to Lineage to Ubuntu and postmarketOS.
Has a removable battery, 3.5mm audio jack, SD card slot. IIRC it worked fine on 3G, but did not support calls on 4G.
The Xiaomi Mi A1 from late 2017 had very good ROM/rooting capabilities when I last used it 4-5 years ago. It didn't have a removable battery though. The second sim slot can function as a microSD card and it has a 3.5 mm audio port.
Checking the LOS website, they say it has support for LOS 20 / Android 13, which is pretty impressive considering the official ROM only went up to Android 9.0. I stopped using the device on LOS 17.1 / Android 10.
Fairphone
poco f1 maybe. runs mainline linux
i like my xperia xz1c, but its very hard to replace battery
Nexus 4
Great little device from 2013-ish and could take a beating. Battery wasn't too difficult to replace. No SD slot, though.
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