The dim 400nit 720p lcd screen is the biggest no-go for me. Especially on a 6,6" device. I had a budget 5" 720p phone many years ago and it just sucked even back then. The brightness wars got a bit silly recently with screens with claimed peaks up to 3000nits. But having ~1000nits is pretty neat under direct bright sun light.

The SOC is pretty mid. I’m sure it will do normal phone stuff adequately but a phone i had seven years ago had better and higher clocked prime cores and it was 50 bucks cheaper back then. Mediatek devices tend to have practically no custom rom support which also isnt great. But tbh the custom rom scene isnt in a great spot atm either way. It isnt a negative in my book but also doesnt tip the scale to the positive.

8GB of ram is okay at that price and the current market conditions. 256gb of storage is pretty good. But no mention at all what kind of storage? So in the best case UFS 2.1 which would be okay or at worst EMMC which would just suck.

Idgf about selfies. But if you do that front camera will look like ass. That secondary 2mp macro at the back is just utterly useless and a waste of space and ressources. 50mp on the mainshooter doesnt sound to bad but look at that tiny lens. With that the sensor must be tiny too. Combined with a shitty camera app of a tiny manufacturer i predict the pictures will look like they were taken in the last decade.

Most people dont give a shit but i do: USB 2.0 in 2026 should be illegal.

Headphone jack: exists, which is good.

In regards to the software: idk, man. Over the years i’ve seen a lot of big privacy claims by niche companies. The privacy focus was IMHO almost always just a marketing device. The actual implementation was either lackluster or straight up misleading. Yeah, and just reading the usual marketing blurbs doesnt give me any confidence its different this time. Especially if they claim their rom is completly degoogled but Aurora Store is preinstalled. Technically correct but you wont believe which service owned by google Aurora accesses. :D

For 350 bucks i rather buy yet another used Pixel and put Graphene/Lineage(if its older and unsupported by Graphene). The hardware on Pixel devices isnt even that great considering their flagship pricing on new phones. But even a Pixel 6 runs circles around that Brax3.