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Comment by blankdebut | Hacker News Reader

I'm putting off buying a new phone in general until we get a decent Linux variant. Currently rocking a Samsung S4 running LineageOS.

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> I'm putting off buying a new phone in general until we get a decent Linux variant.

Me too. I want a smartphone which can run an up-to-date OS for more than 5 years, just like my laptop.

LinageOS dropped official support for my current phone a couple of month ago, which means no more updates for this phone... EOL... The phone was released July 2016. The hardware works just fine. I would use it for many more years if it was still receiving updates. What a waste of resources and time.

Once again I'm looking for a new phone, because my old one died of planned obsolescence.

Does lineageOS run faster on older hardware? I have a Samsung S5 Active that I loved, and when lollipop came out it really dragged it down. My new S8 active already has cracked screen and screwed up case, while my S5 is in perfect physical condition.

I'd love to install some other OS and make it usable.

I don't know what the status is on the S5 Active in particular, but the S5 is/was one of the most highly used and well developed of all Cyanogen/LineageOS phones. All the rest of the Samsung phones after the S5 had locked down bootloaders and other crap, but the S5 has incredible support. You should definitely go find out what the status is on it. The S5 Active probably has some minor differences that requires a specific image version but I don't know.

And if you don't want to mess with it yourself you could probably sell it for $80.

I've concluded that any linux phone will lack the frequencies my provider (t-moblie) is using for the next few years so I'm trying to figure out what to get for the next two years. I'll probably buy a pine-phone sometime after the full release though.

So this Pinephone has everything but T-Mobile LTE band 66 and 17. That's pretty good and puts it on par with something like the old OnePlus 5T.

I use my phones in areas where it is 2g, or LTE bands not covered by the pine phone (or my current phone which just died so I need to upgrade anyway). Thus my concern.

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