alt Hacker NewsI been considering Fairphone cause I want to support smaller vendors and also because it is repairable.
As for Linux distros. The MNT Pocket Reform comes with Debian and I plan to leave it at that even though Debian is not my favourite. I will use Niri and Noctalia with it. I plan to make use of whatever Debian package but if it is too old for my taste, I'll look for AppImages and Flatpaks as needed. I got a Surface Go 1 running exactly that setup but with Fedora and works really well for me.
Want to use KDE Connect to link whatever Android I get with the laptop.
Nice, I've standardized on Debian/KDE for most of my devices. Honestly, I recommend switching the repos to Testing and, in your case, using the edge kernel from Armbian. You'll have a much more performant and stable desktop, in my opinion. Flatpaks from there when available, and you should be golden :)