Hullo everyone,
Recently my phone broke to a certain someone (little brother) throwing a
stool at it. I usually use my phone to listen to music (in my personal
library of downloaded mp3s) via connecting it to my bluetooth
headphones. I no longer have access to that and so I picked up an old
alarm clock radio I had lying around and have been using that to
fullfill my music needs (as well as an alarm clock because I don't have
my phone anymore to set alarms or show me the time). My main problem
with it (other than not being able to choose music and have a small
number of available stations to tune into none of them being what I
enjoy listening to) is the lack of portability and having to play it
outloud. I can't exactly chug around an alarm clock to listen to music
so I need a small portable device capable of tuning into fm radio and
using headphones with (ideally with bluetooth). Its even better if the
device is capable of downloading music and playing it back. I know some
old phones have fm radio support so I was maybe thinking I should buy
one that meets my needs. Does anyone have any recommendations for this?
I will eventually need a new phone anyways. Any recommendations for a
device than gives you freedom and allows you try to run as much FOSS as possible on it is also a preference. I was thinking of getting a Google
Pixel (to put Graphene OS on) but they don't seem to have fm radio. I
heard a rumor than you can use earbuds as radio antennae on phones as
well so maybe I can use those to access radio from a phone if it doesn't natively support it.
--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113

m256@tilde.institute wrote:

I will eventually need a new phone anyways. Any recommendations for a
device than gives you freedom and allows you try to run as much FOSS as possible on it is also a preference.

I can help here! I also really got sick of my phone being full of stuff
I couldn't control, and so when I moved to a new phone I did some
research and ended up getting a Oneplus Nord N10. Refurbished it was
around $100. It wasn't top of the line, but the only real differences
between the Nord line and the Oneplus main line phones is a worse camera
and a slightly worse display.

And very importantly, there's good support for LineageOS and such, as
well as a backup of the stock rom on an internal chip that can be
accessed with a tool released by the devs, making it nearly impossible
to brick (I had to emergency recover it out of bootloops and other
issues a few times while messing around, and god it was smooth and a lifesaver).

I currently have mine set up with all google services and such ripped
clean out, running just FOSS apps from F-Droid (except for a fork of the Discord apk, wrapped to not realize it doesn't have access to google
serviecs and run in a sandbox with no access to anything (haven't gotten
my friend groups to ditch Discord yet)).

I can also confirm that it works quite well for listening to locally
stored music, spent some good chuncks of the recent holiday dozing while listening to ambient synthy vibes.

--- Synchronet 3.19a-Linux NewsLink 1.113