Hello, am looking for a recommendation for a semi burner phone for travel. Features I would like to have are: decent vendor support (that is, software updates), relatively inexpensive (cheap enough so that if it gets stolen or confiscated by porcine law enforcement I won’t be too sad) but nice enough to keep as a daily driver, physical SIM card, ok camera for travel photos. I am currently leaning towards the Pixel 9a but at $499 USD that is pushing a bit against affordability. Any suggestions?
Some more clarification - I plan to spend significant time overseas in a country to remain unnamed. This phone will be my daily driver in that country with a local number. I will likely get a prepaid US number for this phone as well. But I will also be traveling back and forth. I do not expect to have any important info on this phone but I am not looking for a bottom of the barrel true throwaway burner. Looking for a decent midrange phone. My risk tolerance tops out at $500 hence thinking about the pixel 9a but there may be better suggestions cheaper and/or used.
I consider my Moto G 5G 2023 model which was $250 new at the time to be a perfectly good midrange phone. One nice aspect is it has a microsd slot, so it might be possible to store your photos on a card instead of in the internal flash. You then have to worry about copies somehow getting to the internal flash, but other than that, you can remove the card before returning home. You then have to transport the card somehow, but it’s tiny and you can easily stash it without making it look like you’re hiding it, or mail it home to yourself with reasonable chance of it not being intercepted and read, or maybe just run something that writes encrypted copy into internal flash, then throw away the card.