

I used e/os by Murena for a few years already on my Oneplus Nord. Except for banking and some google stuff it works really well. Now that phone is almost dead, and I plan to switch to Pixel 7 pro and probably LineageOS.
I would expect murena’s homebrew phones to be lower class, so if you dont want to flash/install OS yourself, you can also get a refurbished pixel 7 : https://murena.com/shop/smartphones/premium-refurbished/murena-pixel-7-refurbished/
It is complicated. I follow almost 500 accounts often producing 50 toots per hour. Nobody should spend that much time to catch up with all. My coping tools are:
Making lists, including one for important accounts I don’t want to miss. Sadly I cant find a way to get notifications for those.
Resisting FOMO. Remember, mastodon is people-centric, not topic-centric like Lemmy. I don’t try to use it as news source or catch all hashtags I care of. Just treat it as a space to casually look what people are talking about.
In general I think that backlash against algorithms went the wrong way. We poured the baby with the water. We should have resisted their harmful use, lack of transparency and user control, rather than the very idea. Controlling what content shows up first and setting your priorities is a good thing. Users should have this power, not corporations and not even admins.