The Nokia KaiOS devices come with built in Google services, which instantly disqualify them for me. I don't trust that information from those phones aren't being seeded to Google.
I really gave it a shot and I'd be totally willing to accept a phone with reduced functionality as long as I can use it as a hotspot.
The problem is that that thing is so buggy and error prone that it's borderline unusable.
Initially it could do Umlauts (Language setting is German), but can't anymore since it ran a software update. Email (very primitive, but would have been fine for on the road) is broken.
Add to that the force install of Twitter with said update and a lot more niggling annoyances.
The only useful feature (and the reason I got it to begin with) is the 4G hotspot so at least it's still usable with another device. But the overall experience is so frustrating that I'm just waiting for the breaking point to get an iPhone, since there reallay doesn't seem to be any alternative if you're even slightly privacy concious.
That's a pretty good default security level for personal communications.
I'll give it a serious look.
You can see officially supported devices on the https://download.lineageos.org website
https://stats.lineageos.org/ will give you a bit of an idea of the activity for certain models.
Checking out the forums for unofficial device activity is also a good idea https://forum.xda-developers.com
Using a site like https://www.gsmarena.com/ can be useful for comparing specs. I would also suggest looking at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_LTE_networks when determining which phone to buy.
For me, I wanted one that supported Band 28 700MHz https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/APT_band_plan_in_the_700_MHz_b...
So It's a good idea to look at phones. The OnePlus phones tend to have good support, I think in part because of the developer seed program https://www.xda-developers.com/oneplus-developer-program-cus... the Xiaomi Redmi Notes are not bad either for a cheaper phone.
I mailed your comment to myself in order to dig deepeer into the subject.
Android with Google services is just dead in the water for me (I'll be damned before hooking the arguably most private device into the Google spy machine) and so Apple seemed the only viable alternative.
But if I can run a Google free alternative without too much headache (and at a reasonable price) I'm all for it.
There is already very little accountability or awareness about what Google Services do behind the scenes. You make a call, your phone connects to 1e100.net; you change some settings, your phone connects to 1e100.net. It's insane that no one seems to be paying attention to any of these.
https://support.google.com/faqs/answer/174717?hl=en
For example, here's the IP I get for "google.com":
$ dig google.com +short
172.217.10.238
$ dig -x 172.217.10.238 +short
lga25s59-in-f14.1e100.net.
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/akftmi/comment/ef5yh...
Also, you get some other crap pre-installed that cannot be removed: a few demo's of games & twitter a.o.