I just get used Pixel phones and put Lineage OS on them, or Graphene if thats more you vibe. I would love to one day move to some a more open and repairable phone but the US market just does not seem interested.

i learned the hard way that tmobile won't allow chinese phones on their pre-paid plans so be sure to account for that.

You already mentioned it but Fairphone + TMobile/Mint is a decent combo. The phone itself is fine with /e/. The only downside is the pictures/videos are not the greatest. I would recommend getting an actual camera/something a bit better if that is important to you.

I get the same coverage as my old stock android phone so its not a huge difference. I got the Fairphone 4 because the parts are easier to come by. They update the software ever month or so. No problems so far.

The latest fairphone supports all of the TMobile 4g LTE bands and n2, n41, and n71 on 5g. Mmwave is not a thing on the fairphone.

The new Jolla phone is unknown on that support. Hopefully it's about as good as fairphone.

That said, if you buy it through Murena it should just work and be activatable like any normal Android phone. Also holy shit it's expensive through Murena.

I had a Fairphone 4 with iodéOS before the microphone broke. And the microphone isn't repairable... 🙃

Now I'm on a Pixel 9a with GrapheneOS. Just set it up today but it's been pretty smooth thus far. I'm on Tello (T-Mobile network), and I was even able to get RCS connected within Google messages after following some advice I found.