My venerable Moto G5 has developed multiple independent problems. Thus I’m in the marked for a new phone and I’m looking for suggestions.
I don’t have many requirements, but those are non-negotiable:
- Must have a headphone jack
- Must have expandable storage (AFAIK that still means an SD card slot)
Bonus points for:
3) a large battery
4) not being from a chinese company
5) not having that ridiculous array of cameras on the back that seems to be common nowadays (I do want to be able take photos, but they don’t have to be good)
6) not having a selfie camera that is built into the screen
7) being a rugged / outdoors phone (which seems to correlate with point 3)
8) allows for an alternative OS, or maybe even comes with one preinstalled.
Price doesn’t really matter beyond me not wanting to get ripped off.
I already looked around a bit and found a couple of options:
a) Volla Phone X23: German company, comes with the option of their Android spin-off or Ubuntu Touch. Even has a replaceable battery. But the screenshot of the spin-off don’t look like it would be for me and Ubuntu Touch doesn’t seem to be quite there yet
b) AGM H5 Pro: from Portugal, a rugged phone, but only comes with Android 12 and I found no information on which version it can updated to. Also since it’s kinda niche, I guess I can’t put a non-google Android on it.
c) Moto G56: upgrade from what I have now. Back then I chose a Motorola because I was told I comes with the least amount of garbage pre-installed, is this still true?
I couldn’t find it in the list of models LineageOS supports, but since a lot of other models are listed I attribute that to the G56 being new, right?
d) hopefully you can give me some better options
Thank you!
You’re asking for something that was already becoming rare 10 years ago.
Are you referring to the headphone jack or the sd card slot? Because geizhals.de shows 144 models having both running Android 15, ranging from 1500€ to under 100€ in price. Looks like plenty of options to me.
What years did those come out? Because yes I haven’t personally seen more than a couple of phones with those things in years
Filtering to Android models that came out in 2025 yields 250 results.
Huh, that’s surprising. When I went looking for models like that any time I’d find one it was either lacking in other ways or only available in non-US countries. Maybe you live somewhere where this doesn’t apply, or maybe a backlash against losing those features has occurred over the years
I’ve seen phone cases that have a battery and usb-c cradle built in. Maybe there are some that have extra storage, or even expandable storage.
I think Sony allows the bootloader to be unlocked, so i would go for the new Xperia 10 vii and just put a beefy case on it to be honest. Not only does it have the 3,5mm jack, but also SD card slot, no stupid punchhole/camera cutout, has a good battery, is a ‘normal’ size (6.1"). If i didn’t went with the Fairphone 6, i’d go for that one.
Those rugged phones are falling short in many ways, and most of them are pricey too. And Motorola isn’t what they used to be, sadly.
U seem to know a bit about sony, are they able to read NTFS file system or only exfat?
Honestly, i’m not sure. But it seems that (some) Sony phones supported that natively in the past, so it could be.
I would check some Sony related communities if i were you. If i see something regarding this, i will let you know!
That goes on the short list. Thank you!
Honourable mention for the Xperia 1V as well, worth the price if you can get one refurbished (Unfortunately there’s a bit of bloat but if you’re looking to have your own OS on it then not an issue)
The current Moto G series (US market) has headphone jack, microsdxc slot, decent battery runtime, and fairly easy availability of replacement batteries. Missing some of the other stuff on your list, but I’m happy with my Stylus 5g 2023 model regardless. Someone in another thread said these models aren’t being sold in the EU, but maybe you can import one somehow if that’s where you are. For the US models, see: https://www.motorola.com/us/en/family/g.html
I doubt the added hassle of importing will be worth it. Those model numbers are really confusing. What would be the difference between the moto g56 5G that is available in the EU and the moto g stylus - 2025 that is available on the US site? The US site just says “Snapdragon® 6 Gen 3 Mobile Platform” for CPU which means absolutely nothing to me.
Gsmarena allows you to compare phones side by side, including benchmark results
You could look on some site like androidpolice.com maybe? Or just see whether your network’s frequency bands are supported by a given phone model. Most new phones work internationally, I think. I know it’s not too hard to get EU models in the US from amazon or ebay. Maybe the reverse is also true.
Try versus.com . Put in your selection criteria, it’ll give you a list of phones that meet that criteria. You can pull them up together to compare features, and they have an overall rating as well.
Some of the niche retailers that might fit OPs criteria are nkt there
I’m using a Moto G Stylus 2023, about to upgrade to the 2025 version if they have a good sale on Black Friday. It has expandable storage with a Micro SD Card and a standard headphone jack, plus a built in stylus which is nice.
That phone honestly looks great…
But one huge downside for many: It seems only to be available in North America… :-(
Get a separate dac. I love my Ifi Zen, its just so cool and hilariously impractical; bigger that the phone, two wires stickin out; accidental volume changes etc.
Blud I need a headphone jack so I can plug my earbuds so I can pick up a call without using my hands. I’m not using IEM or listening to 96 bitrate stuff
Seems my sales pitch didn’t work. Did I mention you can duct tape the dac to the phone directly and get cavity searched at airports.
How thorough are those cavity searches while using that setup? Asking for a friend.
That depends on the length of yer beard. About 1 hour per inch.
Go on…tell me more. What IEM do you prefer and is the search gloved or ungloved?
Shanling ME500. It starts gloved.
Back then I chose a Motorola because I was told I comes with the least amount of garbage pre-installed, is this still true?
This was definitely still true for the Moto G72 I am using for almost three years now, but had already changed for the Moto G54 my girlfriend bought 1.5 years ago.
This one had several unwanted and unremovable crap apps preinstalled. One forced itself to the screensaver with a button you often accidentally pushed that then started downloading and showing animated screens that led to online ads when you clicked on them. Very hard to disable and would return after each Firmware update…I couldn’t find it in the list of models LineageOS supports
And being a device with a Mediatek chipset it is unfortunately very unlikely to ever appear there.
Then the Motorola goes to the bottom of the list. Thank you
If you’re thinking like that, consider a second hand Pixel 8(a) GrapheneOS and 7 years of security updates… Zero crapware. I combine it with a Qudelix-5K which gets me back a very high fidelity (48/96 Khz 32bit) audio jack via bluetooth.
How do you handle the lack of storage space?
Edit: I meant extra SD slot.
Nokia XR21 has a headphone jack and is rugged.
If you want to run Lineage OS you can check the phones on this list.
But sadly no SD-card, that’s a no-go with a paltry 128GB of storage. The XR20 does have an SD-card slot, but is 4 years old by now.
128gb, paltry??? Are you keeping an offline copy of your movie library?!
It’s my music library, but yes.
Jesus, what do you do that necessitates having that much? I don’t think I could listen to that much music if I tried.
I am like you…I’ve got 128 on phone and 512 SD card. As I’m reading this thred and looking what’s on my phone and storage I’ve got a lot of stuff I’m carrying around I don’t need to… Also my music library would never fit on anything under a terabyte.
The iKKO Mind One fills quite a few of your requirements, including headphone jack and SD card slot (through the optional keyboard case, which also includes a DAC), single camera that flips manually into a selfie camera, and comes with iKKO’s alternative OS built-in (can also be removed prior to order) and will support bootloader unlocking to install third-party OS.
But it’s a first-gen product not yet released, and fails several of your requirements. The battery is small (because it is a low power device with a very small screen), the company is based in China I believe or at least has strong connections there, and it’s not a rugged phone. So maybe not ideal for you, but I thought I’d put it out there since not many people are aware of this phone yet and it is quite a niche device that is very appealing to some.
Otherwise, Sony are really the only mainstream manufacturer I’m aware of that still consistently has headphone jacks and SD card slots on their devices. Many others have one or the other, or are limited to both on cheap/low end devices. I’m not sure if Sony still allows bootloader unlocking, as their unlock tool only covers previous gen devices currently.
While that phone is probably the most interesting one I have seen so far, I doubt I would be happy with it.
Would a USB-C to headphone Jack converter open up your options? You can buy one with usb pass through to charge and listen at the same time. I really wanted to keep my headphone jack but I’ve gone to Bluetooth and it’s pretty good tbh
Beyond not wanting to carry a converter around, this is a matter of principle for me.
That’s fair enough, I had a headphone to lightening adapter permanently plugged into my headphones for about a year… I went through a pair of headphones about once every 2 years, the cable would get snagged on or trapped in something eventually. Had AirPods for 5 years… I’d say in another year I’d probably be at the break-even point from an e-waste perspective, but I’d probably have to keep them for another 15 years to make up the price difference.
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Three of our family’s five previous phones would like to disagree, as they all began struggling with unreliable USB-C connections (also during charging 😒) already after one or two years of use.
And two of those weren’t even used with a USB-headphone adapter…
Never had any similar problems with 3.5mm headphone jacks in the 10 years of smartphone usage preceding that. Just clean them once in a while from dust motes and you are fine.
