Either one of these phones will effectively be without warranty from the start. I can't file a warranty claim for a Fairphone 5, because they offer no warranty in my country. I can't file a warranty claim on a Pixel 8a, because I can't create a Google account.

Free open source software is important to me, and these are the free-est phone OSs I could find.

I'm planning to install Magisk to root the phone. I need adb root at a minimum. Will this prevent automatic updates?

Why do the GrapheneOS people say that rooting breaks the whole security model of Android? I can't understand this, because only a few specific apps are granted root access, or possibly only adb.

Reasons I need root access:

I need a comprehensive backup system. Non-root backup systems skip files.
I want to block connections using the hosts file.
I want to study the filesystem to learn more about Android.
I want to mess with apps' internal states.

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 week ago

Appreciate the info & context, and I agree with your overall sentiment WRT device protection against authorities.

I'll be moving to grapheneOS for my next phone (which unfortunately may be another from the pixel series). I suppose I can try my hand at magisk and other things (I'd still prefer to use MicroG on GOS). If it writes a custom boot image then there's a chance it'll prevent boot entirely. I'm not sure if there are other methods for installation or temporary use of root?