I originally posted this eight months ago but then deleted it when it turned out that none of the EMUI 8-dependent OpenKirin ROMs could operate the goofy dual camera setup without crashing. Quite the fatal flaw. This was corrected following the recent release of EMUI 9, allowing me to finally use the phone, and I haven't had any noteworthy issues since. With the benefit of hindsight, I might have gone for a Nokia 8 instead.
The Nexus 5 was almost perfect IMO. No nonsense, powerful at the time and reasonably priced. It should have had more storage and the speaker and camera could have been better but what are you going to do.
Mine was really showing its age so I gave up and went down the alternative route of buying a cheap(-ish) 2017 model Huawei and putting an OpenKirin custom ROM on it. It was a bit of a faff (edit: which turned into an eight month long wait for one that worked properly...) and involved paying for an unlock code, but now I've got a 128GB (+µSD) ~5" phone with a reasonably modern 8 core big.LITTLE SoC, 50% more battery capacity and yes, a headphone socket for less than the Nexus 5 cost originally. And, importantly, vanilla Android rather than Huawei's EMUI nonsense.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
