The Jelly Star is even smaller and released last year. Not that I would recommend it to anyone concerned with updates or custom ROM support, because it probably won’t get any lol

He wants a small/compact phone

Sorry if I’ve misunderstood what you were trying to say. I interpreted that quote from you as suggesting the last true compact Android phones (the Xperia Compacts and, to a lesser extent, the S10e) don’t have custom ROM support. If you were instead saying the most recently released “compact” phones (which are really just medium-sized phones) don’t have custom ROM support, then that would also be partially incorrect since the Pixel A series is widely supported and the Xperia 5 III has official LineageOS support.

They specifically said “not second hand” so I assumed not.

Compact phones are dead now and the last ones don’t even seem to support degoogled custom ROMs.

The XZ2 Compact still has LineageOS and DivestOS support and there are ongoing unofficial iodéOS builds for the XZ1 Compact (which I am using). The S10e has decent support too, although it’s a bit larger. But yes, modern compacts are dead in the traditional form factor - it’s now flips or a niche micro-brand phone like the Unihertz Jelly series.

Yes, that is too old for a new phone considering it’s already past its end-of-life for both official support and your OS. I’m not sure why you’d recommend them to buy new either - a phone like that is only going to be good value if you pick up a used one for cheap. A new model will be massively overpriced for what it is (and may not even be new, just refurbished and repackaged).

Safe and official are not the same thing. I’m not sure there is any pirate site that is 100% safe when downloading applications. You are always taking an educated risk based on the history of the site, the moderation, the users and the application in question. It is not a good habit to think of things as clean or unclean, safe or unsafe, because circumstances can always change and you need be actively on the lookout for warning signs.

I am mostly concerned with tracking from the private sector; I see privacy as more of an ethical dilemma than an immediate threat, although the corporate surveillance business model is contributing to problems in the real world (data drives social media algorithms which brainwash and radicalise people, leading to increased violence and social chaos). If there is a better alternative to some privacy-invasive big tech app or service then I will make the effort to switch to that. I am willing to sacrifice convenience to support projects that I believe are doing things the right way, or at least putting some effort into being better. However the reality is that most people, whether it’s my friends and family or just acquaintances, do not share my ethical concerns and/or are unwilling to make personal sacrifices and this means I will always need to remain open to compromise to avoid isolating myself socially.

When it comes to the public sector, I am mostly interested in circumventing the federal government’s mandatory data retention laws. which were imposed by a conservative government I didn’t vote for. Again, this is more of an ethical decision; I believe I should have the right to opt out and if the government won’t allow me to do that then the next step is to use tools like VPNs to ensure that data is less personally identifying than it otherwise would be. And again, like data collection from the private sector, my attitude towards government data collection varies depending on whether I see a reason for it to exist. Mandatory data collection of lawful civilians for vague “national security” reasons is overreach and doesn’t have an obvious practical benefit, but during the worst of the COVID years I was okay with the compulsory government tracking of where I had been and when. I saw the pandemic as an immediate challenge we needed to overcome as a society and I was willing to sacrifice my privacy to contribute towards the collective effort.

SolidTorrents is a pretty good aggregator. You can also search on non-English sites (I use Korean ones).

For my threat model, yes they are trustworthy enough. I am not concerned about concealing my identity from a government investigating me for some alleged crime, but rather just transitioning away from Google and investing my time and money into a company that better respects my privacy. As a result, the centralisation doesn’t concern me as much as it does others and I am fine using Proton for VPN, email, calendar and storage. I also use SimpleLogin, which is now owned by Proton. All their applications are well designed and reliable for basic use in my experience, and it is more affordable for me to bundle these services together. I would definitely recommend them to people like myself, but your threat model sounds a little more complicated so you might want to do some further research and see what else is out there.

You can choose to be offended and cry, or not.

an iPhone comes clean out of the box

How does it come “clean out of the box” when you literally just said it requires modifications to the settings to improve its privacy?

at least there’s no vendor garbage

Samsung and Xiaomi apps are vendor-specific and can be disabled, even without the use of UAD (which works fine, not sure why you’re lying about that).

unlike an Android where you’ll be forced into a 3rd party tool or a ROM like GrapheneOS if you want a clean experience.

GrapheneOS is available as an option because Android has an open-source basis. Remind me which alternative privacy OS Apple allows third party developers to create for iPhone? Which iPhone did they allow users to install this imaginary privacy OS on?

You also are sure that your apps won’t be able to get system-wide access

Android applications have been sandboxed for several versions now.

Not sure why you’re so offended here. The advice I gave you is literally what you claim to be doing.

That’s good, I’m glad to hear you’re getting professional treatment since your original statement indicated the opposite:

I know it is not helping me the same as a professional would.

I love the moral grandstanding from virtue signallers like yourself when you get called out on how utterly useless and selfish your behaviour is. I’m still the only one to offer genuine advice here; advice I know to be backed by academics and science. You have literally done nothing other than to encourage this person to continue a form of treatment you know to be dangerous, all to appear empathetic on social media.

The problem with iOS is the lack of freedom and control you have as a user. Yes, Apple may be “better than Google” when it comes to some aspects of default privacy on their devices (being better than the worst is hardly something to brag about), but as a user the level of privacy you can achieve on your iPhone is always limited by the design of the operating system, where you are just a user with no permissions and no ability to modify or even replace the operating system entirely. You are locked into a proprietary ecosystem that you cannot get out of.

I’m not saying that Apple doesn’t track things, because they do, but at least there’s no vendor garbage and you can go through the Settings and disable everything you don’t need, restrict Apps from running in the background etc.

Did you make a mistake here? You are describing an Android device. You can even remove apps entirely from a device with a tool like Universal Android Debloater, and Android allows alternative app stores so you don’t need to rely on a heavily limited selection of proprietary apps.

There is nothing “dismissive” about offering advice to people who clearly need it. In actual fact, you are the one who was dismissive of the issue here by offering some cowardly “feel good” reply instead of opening up and sharing your honest thoughts. Stop tiptoeing around issues and enabling harmful behaviours. Relying on AI chatbots for mental health advice is very dangerous, and it’s absolute madness to encourage this as a primary form of treatment when you are seemingly aware of the dangers yourself.

You literally just encouraged them to continue using a chatbot for mental health support. You didn’t nudge them anywhere.

Stremio is pretty easy to setup. You will need to make use of the community add-ons, found here.