What is currently an alternative to Cyanogen, that would be relatively easy to install and provide a fairly minimal but comfortable environment?
I tried Android a few years ago on an LG G2. Rooting to install CyanogenMod was an EXTREMELY STRESSFUL EXPERIENCE; and flashing back to stock to return the fucking thing every time it broke (every other month) was even more stressful.
I'm on an iPhone now because it works well and doesn't shit out every 5 minutes like my G2 did, but I'm becoming increasingly aware of the myriad ways that my personal privacy is being violated by the apps and services that I use, and I'm considering jumping ship again.
But I can't handle the constant stress of hardware breaking and having to frantically scramble around, downloading random zips off of weird mirrors from the XDA forums and wiping my phone back to stock so I can return it and go through the same thing again, a week later.
I have a G3 currently and it also sucks, before that i always had Nexus phones and with them everything worked perfectly without any issues all the time. Non locked, easy to root, many tutorials and many helping tools.
You need to make sure the manifacturer has a open bootloader. I think only Sony does this most of the time, LG promised to but failed it with the G3, not sure about the G4.
No idea about the warranty tho, in my country i can do whatever i want (terms of software) with the hardware i bought, they cant take my warranty for software changes. But again nexus does not care for example.
Also don't use any crazy roms. Use common ones like Cyanogen or AOKP, no forks from one man teams or shit like that. AOKP is more stable and smooth than Vanilla Android in my experience.
They are available on Verizon now though, it seems. It might be worth a look.
Thanks for the info.
I have an iPhone 6 for work (work issued). It's pretty nice too.
I'm really glad that you haven't had that experience!
The grass isn't greener on the other side.