Oneplus Nord N10

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I have talked about this phone before. Relevant post links: here and here.

GSMArena link to this phone here

A picture of a Nord N10 on a desktop
My phone, without a case.

Purchased back in 2021, this was one of two phones that I have ever bought new (the other phone being the Moto G4 Play), and I bought it instead of the Pixel 3a that was at the same price because it had a headphone jack and an SD card. I was dealing with a iPhone SE back then, and I needed a new phone that wasn’t locked down to hell and back (also because I was yearning for Android again). In hindsight, I wished I have went for the Pixel 3a, since it would’ve had more custom ROM support, but oh well. I bought this phone unlocked, at a Best Buy for a grand sum of 300 dollars. This phone has expandable storage, headphone jack and an unlockable bootloader.

To be honest, I always had mixed feelings about this phone. It feels like a plastic McDonald’s happy meal toy, with a plastic back that collected scratches like crazy. There was no real custom ROM support up until recently, and to make matters worse, Oneplus decided to give their customers the middle finger by only giving out a single Android update and then leaving the phone to rot and die. Another amazing thing that just makes my fucking gears grind is the fact that that speedy 30 watt fast charging gets obliterated the moment you install any custom ROM, since the fast charging standard that Oneplus uses is proprietary and only works inside the stock software, and no one has managed to get it working yet, and I doubt it will ever get a fix because I heard that the developer maintaining LineageOS hasn’t had the time to fix the issue. Android 11 (the last update that Oneplus decided to give) was pretty buggy and it made me not want to deal with it anymore. Meanwhile, on the official Lineage OS builds, I have this annoying issue where if an app tells the OS that it has frozen, for some reason the message will refuse to go away. Every time I try dismissing it, it keeps coming back every five seconds, so it forces me to close the app and reopen it again, a massive pain in the ass.

The operating system

For the longest time, I used the stock OS that came with the phone, mostly because there was no good custom ROMs out there. That changed until there was finally an official release of LineageOS for the device, and I proceeded to finally try it. For the most part, it is stable, but it lacks some features that the stock OS has. The first one, is the charging speed, which locks the phone to a max charging speed of only 8 fucking watts, which is absolutely unacceptable.

Around February of 2025, I finally decided to take the plunge and fully degoogle my phone (for the most part). It was pretty painless for the most part, since I already done some work on getting rid of some pesky apps that need Google services to work at all. On my phone, I mostly use FOSS apps, and I make use of Shelter to isolate those more privacy invasive apps that I need to keep around, like my banking app (a banking app that works on degoogled phones? impossible!), and other apps that need Google account sign in. I really really want to kill off Whatsapp because it is owned by Meta and it is equally as evil as Google, but the issue is that no one here knows what Signal is, and trying to convince someone to use a service that they don’t know or want is pretty hard, to be honest. I guess I might try doing something like a Matrix bridge so I don’t need to have the app installed on my device, but I have worries that it won’t work, or something will end up breaking. I have heard of the concept of a Whatsapp to Matrix bridge, and tbh I am starting to consider that, but that will be whenever I finally get my server up and running properly.

Another app that I would love to get rid of is Google Maps. GMaps is the gold standard of navigation apps, and to be honest, OpenStreetMap in the city I live in doesn’t really work well at all, and often shows places that are outdated or closed. It shows me locations that don’t exist anymore and a lot of apps that depend on OSM often struggle to find places in my city, often showing me a similarly named place somewhere 600 km away at best. It is a shame, to be honest. If that wasn’t enough, OSM doesn’t show any bus routing, meanwhile GMaps does.

ROM situation

In the past I used to constantly hop across different ROMs just to see how it was like. One week I was on Resurrection Remix, another week I was running AOSP Extended, sometimes I would try out LineageOS or some other weird oddball custom ROM that promised X thing or whatever. However with the passage of time, many of these ROMs with crazy customization are just gone, being replaced with nothing in particular, or sometimes, with often unoptimized GSIs being available1. For most phones, they often only have a port of LineageOS available, and it is kinda sad, isn’t. The N10 is one of these phones, with a barely active XDA forum presence and just a single official ROM.

I know that walking around with a phone with an unlocked bootloader is probably a bad idea, but considering the shitfuck amount of markup I would have to pay for something that supported relocking the bootloader (cough Pixel phones), or risk bricking my phone (like on the various Motorola devices that support CalyxOS), I don’t particularly feel that it is worth it honestly. IMO realistically if you lose your phone and someone gets a hold of it, that’s it, you’re cooked, regardless if the bootloader was locked or not. Also I used phones with the bootloader unlocked for years now, and I don’t think there has been any issues, to be honest. (tbf it really is survivorship bias but oh well)

I been reading a lot on Android security recently, and supposedly LineageOS ranks poorly on device security since you cannot relock the bootloader on most devices (along with a bunch of other stuff that I am too stupid to understand, to be honest). A lot of people often say to essentially “ditch your phone” the moment it goes EOL and stops receiving security updates, and some security oriented ROM developers have the same stance, refusing to support devices that have hit EOL like CalyxOS2 and GrapheneOS. The thing is that phones are really fucking expensive, and you’re telling me I should throw it away because the manufacturer is no longer supporting it? Fucking hell.

To repair or not to repair

a (crudely drawn) diagram of how I broke my phone. My axolotl-sona throws a phone to a bed, which bounces and falls on the ground, where it proceeds to shatter.
how I managed to break my phone, a shitty diagram of how it happened.

A couple of months ago, I was going into my room, and like usual, I just threw my phone towards my bed. Usually it lands screen up on the bed, not bouncing, but this time, it bounced from the bed down to the floor, which is hard concrete. When I picked it up, the display was fucking shattered, and trying to use the phone was very hard, and since I was broke, I just rolled with it, and kept using it, trying my best to not get shards of glass latched to my fingers. However, I will be getting a job soon, and now I am with the dilemma to either repair an already 4 year old phone that is worth nothing now, and pay more in repairs to what the phone is even worth, or just get another phone, which will probably have a shitty update schedule.

To be honest, I am not quite sure what to replace this phone with. Most devices on the shelves nowadays fail most of my requirements (for context, those requirements were to have an unlockable bootloader, expandable storage and a headphone jack). This is probably a small list of devices that I could try getting (especially the G84, which one can find it at a semi-decent price.)

Device Requirements met ROMs that I can use
Motorola Moto G84 All LineageOS (LOS), CalyxOS
Motorola Moto G42 All LOS, CalyxOS (however it is EOL)
Motorola Moto G32 All LOS, CalyxOS
Google Pixels (in general) Bootloader unlocking GrapheneOS. LOS, CalyxOS

If there is something I kinda want to try, is to find a device that has relockable bootloaders and use that with a more security focused custom ROM. From what I can find, I could probably use something like CalyxOS on a Moto G84 or some other Moto models3, which is the lowest barrier of entry since that phone is something like 200 dollars here.

I think another option could simply be just keeping my phone and simply repairing it. A full screen and battery swap could be had at a rather low price of 43 dollars, which would be a significant money save for someone who doesn’t have much money like myself. It would be a better financial decision until I manage to get a more stable job where I could have disposable income to buy a Pixel phone that does support something safer like GrapheneOS or CalyxOS.

the future (and switching to single purpose devices)

The concept of the single purpose device is a very interesting one that I been thinking of getting into more. These devices would, in theory, allow me to not use my smartphone to do a specific thing, like listening to music, or taking pictures, since those activities would be handled by that one single purpose device I mentioned. I think I can hand off a couple of devices from the phone to a number of single purpose devices, like the following:

the watch

I think this is obvious. For the longest time I have been using the phone to check the time ever since I got my first smartphone, and I think getting a watch would allow me to stop pulling out my phone, and then getting pulled in by a rouge notification that catches my eye. I think the watch I have in mind is the legendary Casio F-91W, which is a watch so legendary that it has its own Wikipedia page.

I used to own a smartwatch a while ago, but the watch that I used to have, the Ticwatch E3, died after falling to the ground, screen first. Note that the display didn’t break, instead something inside broke somehow, and now the watch’s touch is fucked and it keeps bootlooping until the battery fully discharges. I always wanted a smartwatch, ever since I saw Green Ham Gaming’s video on the Apple Watch back in 2017 or so. He didn’t show it off as this fashion statement that it is nowadays, but more as the tool that a smartwatch should be. But with companies continually eroding privacy in their products in the name of profit, I really doubt I will ever purchase a smartwatch ever again (maybe the PineTime, mayhaps).

the e-book reader

I been wanting to get back into regular reading, reading books and all that jazz. Ever since I found out about Anna’s Archive, there is something pretty cool about having the ability to have literally every single e-book at your disposal with a couple of clicks. However reading stuff on my phone sucks ass, and trying to use my laptop or desktop to read books just feels clunky and shit. I always heard that e-paper e-book readers are better to read on compared to regular displays, and I kinda want to see how the experience is. Also maybe having a whole separate device will help me actually read shit, instead of getting distracted by the smallest of things.

the music player

I love Musicolet on Android, but I hate having to deal with the rest of my phone. Recently there hasn’t been much enjoyment out of just listening to music. My phone often keeps getting in the way, with notifications or whatever else bs. So I think maybe getting a music player like an old iPod with Rockbox or those newer HiBy R1 DAPs 4 would be a good option for myself. I think the most dirt cheap way would to get an old phone and use that to play music or something, idk.

the camera

I kinda miss pocket digital cameras, but it is understandable why they went away from the mainstream when smartphone cameras started to get good. People saw that they didn’t need a camera anymore and they just stopped buying a camera that they don’t care about. It is to be expected. But like, pictures taken on a phone feel in a way soulless, or just lifeless in a way? Maybe it is the post processing, which makes every color retina burning in seconds. Meanwhile, on an older camera, there is a more lively feel to pictures taken there, I really don’t know how to describe. Maybe it is nostalgia or some other bullshit, perhaps.

Anyways, the camera I kinda want to carry around is the Sony DSC-W5, which is a camera from 2005, but takes pretty good pictures for it’s age. There are two downsides with this. The first one is this camera doesn’t have rechargeable batteries, so it means that I would either have to deal with horrible alkaline AA batteries, or pay a ton of money for rechargeable ones. Another issue is the fact that this is the era where Sony was still trying to make MemoryStick a thing, so that means that this camera doesn’t have an SD card slot, instead opting for the MemoryStick thing that I mentioned earlier.

2025-10-31: The phone, finally fixed

Instead of just buying another phone, I finally decided to get this phone fixed. And to be honest, it was less painful than I expected. The last time I ever repaired a phone was that HTC 10 I used to own a while ago, and that took a week to repair because of how complicated that phone was from the inside. But this time, it only took an hour, and was so quick it was insane.

I don't really know if the screen is of good quality. But it seems to look pretty okay, aside from the punchhole camera somehow covering a very small part of the screen, but this is honestly never noticeable aside from very specific circunstances where it blocks some UI elements.

The repair dude also told me that the battery was just starting to bulge, so I decided to go and purchase a battery (since the repair shop didn't had one on hand, and I will bring it back to the shop to get the battery replaced. With that, my phone should finally be back up and running I think.

Also apparently there are some plans from the small developer community surrounding this phone, bringing Android 16 to the device. But I am not entirely sure if this would happen. I think it would be awesome to see that happen, lmao.

  1. GSI refers to Generic System Image, a sorta one-size-fits-all Android system image that can be installed on multiple phones. These depend on something called Project Treble, which was a plan to decouple phone drivers (that often didn’t get updated often) from the rest of the software. It was a solution that Google implemented during the late 2010s to combat fragmentation on Android and to make updates easier. I should mention that this is how I understand it, and I may be wrong.↩︎

  2. CalyxOS does support phones that are EOL, but warn that they won’t get any platform updates like those that are fully supported do.↩︎

  3. Out of all the “security” focused ROMs out there, it is CalyxOS that has support for a couple of phones that don’t cost a fucking arm and a leg, and those are a couple of Motorola phones. These phones are more like 200 dollars, compared to the higher 500 to 700 dollar Pixel phones. There is debate on whether Calyx is as secure as Graphene, but trying to find information on this leads me to comments sections full of flame wars, so i really don’t know, tbh. I think in any case, it would prob. be better than LineageOS on a phone with an unlocked bootloader.↩︎

  4. dedicated audio player↩︎

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