I despise apple but I’d definitely consider picking up a used one if someone gets a nice and smooth build of Linux running on iphones.
These would be the iPhone XS series, the iPhone SE 2, and the iPhone 11 series, all of which use Lightning, not USB-C. Could be annoying if you don’t already have other older Apple devices.
Oh, that’s an important point. Thanks for pointing it out.
A similarly old device that’s supported by a few mobile Linux distros is the OnePlus 6 (I think it’s about 8 years old, so a couple bits older than the iPhone XS), and it has an excellent chip + an OLED screen + USB-C, which is nice.
I used mine with postmarketOS, and most things seemed to work, I didn’t test calling or SMS though. SIM cards do work, you just need to restart the device with the card inserted to use it for some reason. pmOS Wiki + their Matrix space are awesome resources if you need help. WiFi, BT, touchscreen, rotation, cameras, all work. Camera drivers are pretty new so images look pretty rough, but kind of cool at the same time (like film almost with lots of blooming and grain)
Note I used past tense, as the battery seems to have died on my second OP6. I was unable to install it on the first, as the power button was very much jammed so I could not turn it on. My couple weeks with the second was very fun though, I enjoyed Ultimate Tic Tac Toe, Animatch, and Pentobi (all three only available on Linux and were very fun with no microtransactions or ads). Make sure you get used devices from a good seller to avoid dead devices, Android or iPhone!!
