* Apple: You're getting iOS. Take it or leave it.
* Google: OK hardware (maybe that's being generous). iFixit parts available. Hopefully you can make 911 calls in an emergency [1].
* Samsung: Great hardware. Good luck getting something repaired if you need it though. OK software.
* Everyone else: You get maybe two years of security updates.
The OEM Android images out there just scream "GIMMIE GIMMIE GIMMIE!" to me like they see my data and wallet as natural resources to pump and mine!
Fairphone attempts to deliver (also security) updates for quite a long time.
I wanted to like iPhone bit I tried it for a 2y period and it was just too different and I ended up going back to Android.
I have a Sonim XP3+, running Android 11 Go, I think, but it's just a rugged dumbphone. Waterproof, drop resistant up to some very reasonable distance, and "generally indestructible" for most reasonable and quite a few unreasonable values of that term.
It's good for calls, and texting. And the occasional hotspot use. I carry a decade old laptop for other stuff I need, and use the car's GPS if needed, though since giving up on smartphone maps some while ago, my internal navigation is way better than it used to be.
Irritatingly, US carriers all went to VoLTE at about the same time, turning quite a few perfectly good older devices into ewaste, but I'm hopeful VoLTE works for a long while, and I have a decade or so before I have to think about a cell phone again.
And, yes, I know that "I couldn't possibly do that for..." reason lists are long. Try it. If nobody resists "having a modern smartphone and being willing to install any random app someplace demands you install," that will be the future we get. I can't even scan QR codes. Life is good!
And these days car manufacturers are starting to charge a subscription service for it. GM is even going as far as to take CarPlay out of their new cars just to push customers to that subscription.
I've considered pretty hard picking up a standalone TomTom unit to have newer maps on - the car's maps are a decade old and this is at least occasionally a problem finding newer subdivisions, but I can get close to where I need to be and follow my hand-written directions the rest of the way.
New cars are... a problem. I don't want (rather, "won't buy") a "connected car" sort of thing unless I can disable the cell modem entirely before I leave the lot. I do not want a cell phone on wheels, and this is unfortunately what the automakers seem to have decided to ship, complete with "Buggy? Don't worry, we'll patch it later!"
I'm probably good for about a decade on the current fleet before this becomes a pressing issue, and at that point, hopefully either the absurdity will have subsided, or I'll just do my own work on older vehicles or an EV conversion on some classic chassis. Toyota, at least, seems to have a path for "Seriously, turn off the cell modem..." and a few other cars have a fuse you can pull to kill the cell modem and a few other things. I don't mind if I kill Bluetooth, as long as there's an aux-in I can hook something up to (even if that's a little standalone BT receiver as I have in the car now).
I've tried it for a burner phone for international travel, and it turns out that even though I'm a very light user of phone messaging, I find T9 texting exceptionally unpleasant to use. (I never used T9 in its heyday, and find smartphone virtual keyboards unpleasant in the best of cases.) I already do 99% of my messaging at my PC, but sometimes need to message someone on the go.
Now I've just been using my previous primary phone for international travel.
Though I'd probably be okay with a dumb phone with a slider keyboard.
I've been using a five year old hand-me-down 9T and it was recently updated to Android 14 with security patch from May this year. (Thanks to Lineage, of course — the official support ended in 2021).
Google:
/storage/emulated/0/MIUI/debug_log/common/tcpdump