I got my 7a referbished for 350. the nothing phone is cool IMO but probably not going to have good support rn for nieche stuff. lineage & divest not having working versions for the phone raises red flags personaly.
if you are anti pixel & $500 is in your price range maybe take a look at the fairphone 4?
honestly I would personaly look into a used option just for pricing reasons. I think the 8 offered additional security benefits though. It may be a while until the 9 drops but that would also be an option.
if you want to degoogle the only way to run some apps without unprivileged code (GMS/microG) is to use grapheneos & its sandbox compatibility layer. this is unfortunately only available on the pixels.
I also worry you won’t be able to use some of the customization options that the nothing phone 2 offers with its hardware when using a custom ROM. if thats something u care about.
I have the pixel 7a & have had essentialy no issues with anything for what that’s worth.
important second frame for context!
& no it isnt. quite sure twitter broke link previews a long time ago alongside guest accounts.
have you considered using alternatives front ends for some of the major social platforms?
I use libreddit/redlib to browse reddit. you can run an instance locally or connect to remote ones. this way your IP isn’t logged by reddit in the first place & no JavaScript is required to be run for the website to function properly.
there is even an extension called libredirect which can automatically swap clicked reddit (& other platforms) links to the same page on public frontends, which removes the hasstle of manually changing the URL.
scrambled exif is really practical & easy to use. it has been a player for a while now where as metadata remover seems newer & possibly less trustworthy/vetted because of it.
it also doesnt seem to add much new functionality from scrambled exif besides viewing data in app.
I personally use image toolbox which allows you to select what specific exif tags you would like to remove. however, I wouldnt put any more trust in its accuracy or comprehensiveness than any other adjacent app as they realistically all probably work very similarly.
if its imperitive you don’t leak any exif data I would recommend checking that in an external & more trusted app anyway. something like aves or a similar gallery that will lay out all all metadata tied to an image.
you can use something like smspool.net to verify the account with a one time use #. then google will allow you to link an authenticator app to the account. removing the # from the account afterwards does not remove the TOTP code either.