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I think Sony allows the bootloader to be unlocked, so i would go for the new Xperia 10 vii and just put a beefy case on it to be honest. Not only does it have the 3,5mm jack, but also SD card slot, no stupid punchhole/camera cutout, has a good battery, is a 'normal' size (6.1"). If i didn't went with the Fairphone 6, i'd go for that one.
Those rugged phones are falling short in many ways, and most of them are pricey too. And Motorola isn't what they used to be, sadly.
That goes on the short list. Thank you!
Honourable mention for the Xperia 1V as well, worth the price if you can get one refurbished (Unfortunately there's a bit of bloat but if you're looking to have your own OS on it then not an issue)
I am a big fan of my xperia 5v. Yes, its not current but its still a great size, great battery, removable storage, ip rated, and has a headphone jack. You can probably get them cheaper now too. I think I paid $500 a year ago for mine when I was shopping it vs the 10vi.
U seem to know a bit about sony, are they able to read NTFS file system or only exfat?
Honestly, i'm not sure. But it seems that (some) Sony phones supported that natively in the past, so it could be.
I would check some Sony related communities if i were you. If i see something regarding this, i will let you know!
You're asking for something that was already becoming rare 10 years ago.
Are you referring to the headphone jack or the sd card slot? Because geizhals.de shows 144 models having both running Android 15, ranging from 1500€ to under 100€ in price. Looks like plenty of options to me.
What years did those come out? Because yes I haven't personally seen more than a couple of phones with those things in years
Filtering to Android models that came out in 2025 yields 250 results.
Huh, that's surprising. When I went looking for models like that any time I'd find one it was either lacking in other ways or only available in non-US countries. Maybe you live somewhere where this doesn't apply, or maybe a backlash against losing those features has occurred over the years
Try versus.com . Put in your selection criteria, it'll give you a list of phones that meet that criteria. You can pull them up together to compare features, and they have an overall rating as well.
Some of the niche retailers that might fit OPs criteria are nkt there
I'm using a Moto G Stylus 2023, about to upgrade to the 2025 version if they have a good sale on Black Friday. It has expandable storage with a Micro SD Card and a standard headphone jack, plus a built in stylus which is nice.
That phone honestly looks great...
But one huge downside for many: It seems only to be available in North America... :-(
Nokia XR21 has a headphone jack and is rugged.
If you want to run Lineage OS you can check the phones on this list.
But sadly no SD-card, that's a no-go with a paltry 128GB of storage. The XR20 does have an SD-card slot, but is 4 years old by now.
Back then I chose a Motorola because I was told I comes with the least amount of garbage pre-installed, is this still true?
This was definitely still true for the Moto G72 I am using for almost three years now, but had already changed for the Moto G54 my girlfriend bought 1.5 years ago.
This one had several unwanted and unremovable crap apps preinstalled. One forced itself to the screensaver with a button you often accidentally pushed that then started downloading and showing animated screens that led to online ads when you clicked on them. Very hard to disable and would return after each Firmware update...
I couldn’t find it in the list of models LineageOS supports
And being a device with a Mediatek chipset it is unfortunately very unlikely to ever appear there.
Then the Motorola goes to the bottom of the list. Thank you
If you're thinking like that, consider a second hand Pixel 8(a) GrapheneOS and 7 years of security updates... Zero crapware. I combine it with a Qudelix-5K which gets me back a very high fidelity (48/96 Khz 32bit) audio jack via bluetooth.
How do you handle the lack of storage space?
Edit: I meant extra SD slot.
Automated rotation of a large music library on a weekly basis via syncthing, I prefer an offline solution, (but navidrome is there if needed) ~150Gb containing all my playlists and a random selection of other albums keeps me well stocked with old and new. That leaves plenty for taking photos / video (which all gets backed to immich anyway). I don't consume video on tiny screens. 256Gb is plenty for me with this system, 128 would probably do fine.
I am however thinking of hacking together a RasPi type device with a nvme drive, good audio and a backlit ePaper screen and perhaps GPS (music, books and maps covers 85+% of my use case, a standalone camera would get another 10+% ) which would reduce my need for a personal surveillance device being on significantly. Project suggestions gratefully received.
Want all the radio releases albums and billboard top 100 between 1955-2004? It's insane
Get a separate dac. I love my Ifi Zen, its just so cool and hilariously impractical; bigger that the phone, two wires stickin out; accidental volume changes etc.
Blud I need a headphone jack so I can plug my earbuds so I can pick up a call without using my hands. I'm not using IEM or listening to 96 bitrate stuff
Seems my sales pitch didn't work. Did I mention you can duct tape the dac to the phone directly and get cavity searched at airports.
How thorough are those cavity searches while using that setup? Asking for a friend.
That depends on the length of yer beard. About 1 hour per inch.
Go on...tell me more. What IEM do you prefer and is the search gloved or ungloved?
Shanling ME500. It starts gloved.
The iKKO Mind One fills quite a few of your requirements, including headphone jack and SD card slot (through the optional keyboard case, which also includes a DAC), single camera that flips manually into a selfie camera, and comes with iKKO's alternative OS built-in (can also be removed prior to order) and will support bootloader unlocking to install third-party OS.
But it's a first-gen product not yet released, and fails several of your requirements. The battery is small (because it is a low power device with a very small screen), the company is based in China I believe or at least has strong connections there, and it's not a rugged phone. So maybe not ideal for you, but I thought I'd put it out there since not many people are aware of this phone yet and it is quite a niche device that is very appealing to some.
Otherwise, Sony are really the only mainstream manufacturer I'm aware of that still consistently has headphone jacks and SD card slots on their devices. Many others have one or the other, or are limited to both on cheap/low end devices. I'm not sure if Sony still allows bootloader unlocking, as their unlock tool only covers previous gen devices currently.
While that phone is probably the most interesting one I have seen so far, I doubt I would be happy with it.
Hear me out.
Get a Fiio KA5 (or similar).
It’s negligibly tiny.
It’s cheap.
It works between smartphones. You can keep it a decade+.
Now your headphones work with anything.
Sound clarity/noise floor/volume level is better than any phone.
Better sound quality from your PC. Or TV. Or anything.
Now your choice of phone isn’t so restricted, so you can find a deeply discounted one.
What’s the downside? I get some dongles being annoying, like the Apple ports meme, but this tiny thing has caused me precisely zero inconvenience and brought me tons of convenience.
Iam planning to get Moto g100 again eventually. You can still get new ones from ebay.
I had one but i ended using the original ROM. You cant unlock the bootloader right away, and by the time I could unlock it, I had it alredy set up.
Then one day a charger failed and fried the phone.
I have g84 now and the g100 ran circles around it in terms of cpu. It also had video output on USB C which was handy.
Consider you might be able to swap Volla's launcher for another one off the app stores. I don't know how whether this is supported but it is a thing you can do on a regular android device so I'd at least look into it
The BraX3 meets most of these, definitely not rugged tho: https://www.braxtech.net/product
I have an AGM H6 since a time and it's a rugged simple phone with headphone jack. Also pretty affordable. I think I'm havig a problem with disabling gemini but otherwise pretty ok. Stands to note I do use another phone for gaming and such. So the AGM just handles comms and browsing.
If not I heard very good things about the blackview phones. Also rugged.
Would a USB-C to headphone Jack converter open up your options? You can buy one with usb pass through to charge and listen at the same time. I really wanted to keep my headphone jack but I’ve gone to Bluetooth and it’s pretty good tbh
Beyond not wanting to carry a converter around, this is a matter of principle for me.
That’s fair enough, I had a headphone to lightening adapter permanently plugged into my headphones for about a year… I went through a pair of headphones about once every 2 years, the cable would get snagged on or trapped in something eventually. Had AirPods for 5 years… I’d say in another year I’d probably be at the break-even point from an e-waste perspective, but I’d probably have to keep them for another 15 years to make up the price difference.
I've seen phone cases that have a battery and usb-c cradle built in. Maybe there are some that have extra storage, or even expandable storage.