For Canada, it looks to be hard to acquire a used one for less than $250-280 CAD. So about $200-$220 USD.

Still a solid choice. I find it hard to imagine there's any android phone that can beat this phone for the same price (used or not!), OS support, camera quality, speaker quality, CPU speed & task switching speed, overall responsiveness, etc.

Ability to install a free software distribution, side-load software, run a plethora of Linux apps through Termux, fix the screen if you happen to break it without the thing complaining about "non-genuine parts", build, run and distribute software for the device without needing to pay a third party for the privilege of doing so, hook the thing up to a keyboard and display to use it for real work, install a full firewall blocking outgoing as well as incoming traffic...

Oh wait, those are all things you can not do with those iOS devices. Since these happen to be things I do it seems that iPhone won't be myPhone. Also, why don't these friggin' iOS devices support Ogg/Vorbis? I just added a transcoding option to Spodcast [1] to allow those poor souls using such devices to follow Spotify-hosted podcasts through RSS. None of my devices had any problems with Ogg/Vorbis but it turns out iOS simply does not support it. VLC on iOS does as do some other apps but those are not podcast players. Bad Apple.

[1] https://github.com/Yetangitu/Spodcast

I would change (back) to android in a heartbeat if the hardware was actually on-pair and I knew that I don’t have to basically throw away my phone in a few years.

I almost went with the new pixels as that is one of the few android phones actually having a non-locked bootloader (to not have to deal with Google’s privacy violations on my probably most used device), but the many bugs and hardware issues I heard about (plus the terrible support!), as well as not having it sold in my country made me stay with apple, even though GrapheneOS is a spectacular project I wanted to use.

So don’t make it seem like a trivial choice - the fact is, we have basically only 2 options and both suck for different reasons. (Unfortunately, the third one of linux phones are not truly usable as of now)

I'm still using the first Android device I bought in 2010, an Ainol Novo 8 Advanced tablet. I bought it back then for my wife to use while preparing for her specialist exam because of the high-res screen which made it a good fit for reading PDFs. It still works fine for that purpose, it still plays movies just fine. Someone is still releasing "new" software releases for the thing (where "new" means "new rehashed Android 'Gingerbread', but still). After that I bought a Motorola Defy phone which is still in use as well. Then my whole family jumped on that train when they got similar phones, all of which are in use in some way or another. Even my daughter's phone which she left in her pockets when she put her clothes in the washing machine and was washed a full cycle still works - I had to replace the ear piece (cost: $0.50 so I bought 10) but for the rest it kept up. Since the Defy (released in 2010) never went beyond Android 'KitKat' (4.4) I had to get a newer device in 2019 when the Swedish electronic ID provider "BankID" ceased support for that release. Had they not I would still be using a Defy as "daily" phone since the things keep up remarkably well. Now I'm using a Xiaomi Redmi Note 5, again running a custom ('Google-free') distribution like I've always done. I do not know for how long I'll keep on using this device but I see no reason to change as of yet.

A shorter version of this would be "the short life span of Android devices is highly exaggerated". As a bonus you get a mostly surveillance-free device, apart from the overt surveillance which comes with having a radio beacon in your pockets that is. Put the thing in flight mode and you're fine. In this respect Android devices running custom Google-free firmware (an important caveat) are the Linux PCs compared to the bolted-shut "No serviceable parts inside" Apple Mac and the increasingly invasive Windows world. Even the discussion around them is similar:

- Linux is not ready for the desktop... but I've been using it since 1993 on the desktop, from 1996 on exclusively.

- Linux does not support your hardware... while the opposite is true except for the newest hardware which can take a few weeks to months before support arrives.

- Macs just work... until they just don't work and the vendor tells you it's your fault, or the new release suddenly removes support for half of your software.

- Linux is not suitable for gaming... tell all those people running their games on Linux because they run faster/better than on Windows

- Linux users have to spend more time tinkering to get their machines to work... until it becomes clear that the tinkerers tinker because they see it as a pastime while others just install a distribution (in a few minutes) and use the thing as a tool.

- etcetera.

Even shorter because that wasn't very short either: Android devices can be used for a long time. So can Apple devices. Take your pick based on your wants and needs, ignoring the falsities being spread by the true believers.

I’ve yet to see anyone distributing music only in Ogg Vorbis save for some backdoored Spotify thing.

Ogg is unfortunately not a mainstream codec. 10 years ago, SomewhatWellKnownMusicTrackerThatShallNotBeNamed supported Ogg Vorbis. They discontinued support due to lack of interest and seeding (this was before the French authorities raided them and caused the tracker to be shut). To me, when that tracker stopped supporting Ogg, that’s when it died. Even the music nerd pirates thought it wasn’t worth supporting.

As I understand it Vorbis is the codec and Ogg is a container.

Vorbis was popular with video game developers who didn’t want to pay for MP3 or MP4 licensing but outside of that nope.

Spotify’s probably the most (only?) prominent Vorbis user out there… but they probably hardly count since everything they distribute gets wrapped up in their proprietary DRM.

Yes. Opus "replaced" Vorbis, and has several advantages over older and common formats. Many popular streaming and voice-related apps and platforms use it as codec.

Bandcamp does this for all of their paid and free downloads. They also do FLAC.

Bandcamp doesn’t do it exclusively and I wonder if they’ll keep supporting it.

I don't see why they wouldn't, it's one of their selling points and they offer about a half dozen different codecs and containers.

Hope so.

Anyone who does will have Apple users complaining in no time.

Here in Japan, brand new iPhone SE (2020) is sold at $200 without contract. It seems that careers have too much stocks or quota so they need to sell them. I expect they are going to be exported.

Where do you see them being sold for that cheap? Cellcos?

Every electric shop like Yodobashi, and some cell career shop. Tend to be sold in weekend/holidays.

Technically it should be sold for everyone in $190 (22,000JPY), but some shops don't want to sell without contract. Govt make a regulation that limits discount for new contract to 22,000 JPY and careers must sell phones without contract. So shops should set non-contract price to 22,000, to sell for 0JPY for new sign up.

IOSYS has really cheap secondhand simfree iphones

Yes it's also easy way to get cheap new open box one.

The used ones there are usually good as new, Japanese have dislike for used things, so they don't really put out the ones that are really damaged or have lots of scratches.

Please tell me where! I'm seeing 250 on backmarket.com.