Received request from a friend in Minneapolis.
I suggested FairPhone/Murena and they found this Cape.co. The finding a compatible wireless carrier and managing a VPN piece thru them off. They need an easy solution that gives them peace of mind, but they are not techy at all. “Being able to research and pick a carrier, phone and OS was overwhelming.”
This person is not nefarious, but they rightly believe the government is being nefarious in their town and they want to resist while being safe. The marketing from Cape hit the nail, but it’s marketing.
I’m not there to help, so looking for experienced condensed advice on the device.
I should add - this will be a daily driver and I’ve already advised to leave the device home for protests, etc. due to tower tracking. We’re at the next layer.
You mentioned Graphene in the subject and then didn’t mention it again. Why not Graphene?
I would agree a used Pixel with Graphene OS would be the simplest solution.
Most secure option too. I’d never done any kind of custom OS on a phone before Graphene and the web installer made it super easy. Just make sure you have a cable meant for data in addition to charging. I didn’t realize most of the USB-C cables I owned were charging only until I tried to set it up, and I got extremely frustrated why I couldn’t get my computer to recognize anything for an embarrassing amount of time.
I guess this comes too late in your case, but you can tell the difference on the phone by checking if the notification “Charging this device via USB” pops up, which you can tap to enable USB data transfer.