K.

I have a spare device at home (an old nexus 5). If I ever render the FP 6 unusable, I can fall back to that while I wait for parts to be shipped from Europe.

Ultimately the shipping cost and wait time is the only real hurdle to being outside Europe.

I never dabbled with sideloading ROMs, my experience is just stock android.

I switched from pixel (originally a nexus user, then most models up to 6) to FP6. After using google phones for well over a decade, I won’t be going back. Anecdotally:

• FP 6 camera is decidedly inferior to pixel 7 pro. Not just the image quality, but also the pre- and post- processing abilities you have in the pixel simply don’t exist on the FP. Native camera app is fully functional but somewhat limited in options.
• Every. Single. Google. App. can be uninstalled. Simply can’t do that on the pixel. FP comes with a single lightweight manufacturer app that seems to provide only functionality / drivers.
• machine learning on the FP is less capable that the pixel series. For illustration,the ‘predictive apps’ that you see on your pixel is just not available on the FP. In short, Pixel has a strong but invisible range of predictive outcomes that you (I) didn’t recognise until I switched to vanilla android.
• phone is a lot more location dependent. For illustration: I’m in North America and the October android patch forced my device into a boot cycle. Had to disable precise location as a short-term fix. Turns out that FP 6 isn’t sold by FP in North America (Murena is a reseller, no shade) so it’s a bit unsurprising that the patch isn’t robust worldwide. However. The issue was raised in the FP forums, the manufacturer ACTUALLY CONTACTED AFFECTED USERS seeking logs, and a month later shipped the next patch which resolved the problem (I’ve had tickets open with google for 3 bloody years without resolution).

To summarise my experience, I was unconsciously dependent on certain Pixel functionality, and the switch was a little shock. But I feel much more capable with this phone and I certainly feel more control.

Good luck with the choice!

Fuck off with this misinformation.

If the EU was as conformist / homo-cultural as you suggest, the cultural identity of constituent states would have long since disappeared.

Go tell someone in Florence or Sicily that, because they have been in EU since 1950, they are no longer Italian (or that they are somehow now culturally equivalent to a Dubliner). See how that works out for you.