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Pixel 8A you can get probably very affordable now and will get updates until 2031. It's more likely that by that time you will have dropped your phone and break it or simply want a hardware upgrade.
It also supports playing AV1 in hardware even at 4k resolution.
That is now in question after Google has decided to close android development.
Android development isn't closed. The Pixels no longer have public device trees provided by Google, but no other device manufacturer did that either. It was a nice to have, but Graphene still got a fully functional Android 16 build out without them within a few weeks, and the device trees aren't why they build for Pixels, it's the security features.
You can probably expect GOS support as long as Google supports the device, that is the main limitation. For the newer Pixels that is promised to be 7 years after release.
Going by this table, Pixel 6 is currently the oldest to get full GOS updates
That matches Google's software support
This is the answer. GrapheneOS still needs the binary blob updates from Google or probably more correctly Googles suppliers.
I can only share experience with Sailfish OS: As long as you don't drop your phone, it will easily last five years and might last eight. It depends of course as well how much you use some of the cancer that the modetn web is. Looking up the Arch Wiki requires a lot less ressources than browsing LinkedIn.
By 8 years old even the newest devices will be out of software support and using EOL phones is not a particularly great idea for security. GOS's security focus goes out of window if you use an old version with known vulnerabilities.
Sailfish OS has very long support times and the licenses I got so far are without time limit. IIRC that has changed or might change but still significantly longer than any vendor Android.
Question is how "real" that support is - firmware updates matter and depend mostly on the chip manufacturer's support.
firmware updates matter and depend mostly on the chip manufacturer's support.
Can you give examples for this?
The deeper problem is that the OS Vendors for phones are already adversial. They want to extract as much pesonal data as possible. IMO, that is not really better than having malware on one's phone.