It seems that the motherboard is dead, and that it’s a common issue with the 5a and I “should’ve known better,” despite it being impossible to find decent information on phones these days.
I got it because it was the last Pixel with a headphone jack, and because it had good official LineageOS support. But I compromised: giving up the SD slot was tough for me, and now that I’ve been burned by not having one (I typically auto-backup my Signal history and other things to the SD card) I don’t want to get another phone without it.
But the landscape seems bleak. The vast majority of phones that are officially supported by LineageOS are Pixels. It’s impossible to find easy information on which phones have non-official LOS ROMs. Search results are useless these days, and I also keep running into an issue where after researching a phone for half an hour I discover that it has some arcane process to unlock the bootloader that doesn’t always work, and the forum posters imply that the purchasers “should’ve known better.” I’m just at my wit’s end.
If anyone can suggest something that has decent deGoogled ROM support with the following features, I’d be very grateful:
- OLED screen (a must-have for my photosensitivity)
- SD card slot
- I am willing to give up the headphone jack in order to expand my options
That’s a damn shame. I really liked their phones, their only downside, I think, was the crap support - they only give 2 years of updates. But with lineage that is no longer an issue.
They were the only option for a smaller phone for a long time as well, but sadly not available here… :(