Blastoidea @Dumdum I am getting a 4a because it's one of the last "small" phones with a headphone jack and I need both of these things. I'm also probably going to install Graphene because I care about privacy and don't want to have any Google tracking. If I used lineage, I understand that after every update I would have to do some extra steps (change DNS, captive portal, NTP, and SUPL servers as well as system WebView as outlined here). This seems unecessary with graphene as these things appear to already be the default.
Even though I might get updates longer with lineage, as I understand, these would only be updates to the higher level "lineage part" of the OS and not the OEM part by Google part that is responsible for security fixes on a lower level -- similar to the harm reduction support by Graphene. Now I don't really about functionality updates that much. I just want a private device that works and is somewhat secure. So if I get a few updates less because I use graphene but have less hassle staying private and potentially also have more privacy by default with graphene, I think graphene looks better to me right now.
I realize that graphene devs recommend against getting a phone with ending OEM support but since I really want a small phone with a headphone jack that is reasonably new, I think it's my best option. I feel like the security concerns for using a phone that doesn't get security updates anymore are not that big of a deal if I don't install any unsafe apps.
What are your thoughts about this? Please feel free to correct me, I'm just getting into this stuff again.