webwrx wrote: ⤴Tue Oct 16, 2018 12:25 amHi all.. just after advice.
I think the best approach I can take here in giving you advice is to try and give you some data points to go on, because I'd rather you be informed.
Generally, modern Android OS-based smartphones will let you access their storage (both onboard and microSD card if supported) fairly trivially. Software like SMS Backup and Restore lets you back up your SMS and MMS data, giving you several different cloud storage options (including Google Drive) as well as just saving it to the phone itself where you can then copy the files to your computer.
There are a number of different phone models out there with a lot of potentially useful features. The problem I have, however, is twofold: Other phone makers don't tend to support their phones for a long period of time, which means any official updates, which naturally have to filter through them, stop after a certain point even if Google is still putting out updates which could nominally be sent to you. The other issue I have is sometimes they don't use standard means of accessing your phone for other purposes (flashing).
My view is that if it's my hardware, I shouldn't be dictated to.
Google has the best track record on their own devices. I have an older Nexus 6, which originally shipped with some release of Android 5. Ultimately, I could get official updates through Android 7.1.1. It's not really what I wish were the case, but it's kilometers ahead of anyone else's product, in my experience.
Using
adb and
fastboot, I have flashed my phone to LineageOS's AOSP port of Android 8.1. Right now, those folks are working on porting Android 9. The mere fact that I can do that is pretty welcome news.
Since I'm also a GMail user, I don't have to worry about my contacts, which is nice. Also, since I drive for a living, I love having full calendar and navigation integration.
Another potential option out there, and one which I've talked about before on this forum, is Purism's Librem 5, which is a highly security conscious-minded smartphone which will basically be running a port of Debian with a specialized form of Gnome 3.3 (or thereabouts) and I have to say, it's very tempting. The biggest question, of course, is how viable it will be given my needs. But, the hardware itself looks good, and I love the idea of a phone put forth with the express intent to safeguard the user's privacy in literally every way imaginable, from open firmware on the chips, to open drivers, to running GNU+Linux, to having physical kill switches.
The reason I even got into smartphones in the first place was because I couldn't find my flip phone. It was on silent and eventually ran out of charge without being found. Incidentally, found the old phone two months later inside my purse (which was the first place I looked!). 
