Update I have come to a decision. Thank you to all who contributed suggestions. Please feel free to keep the discussion going to help others.
Phones are ridiculously expensive now. I was always buying the best phone growing up, but now it’s absolutely not worth it. People pay for great cameras, essentially, and then post most of their pics on social media where they are compressed and converted from the original image anyway.
Go cheap, and go second hand if possible
Fuck all that noise, Pixel 6a + graphene £130. Why waste so much money!?
Pixel 8 Pro — minimum 7 years support and hardware memory tagging support
These devices aren’t even constructed to last 7 years. I don’t see that either of those things are worth £600 personally.
Well if the support ends, GrapheneOS support ends too. That’s why more years of support is important here.
What relevance does that have to what I said? If the physical phone isn’t going to last that long then I’d argue it is of little importance.
Well if you recommend getting an older phone because it’s cheaper, GrapheneOS support may be a concern. Also I think a phone usually can last for 7 years with 1 battery replacement, good ambient temperature and careful use.