The other day (in the Intel ME thread, I think), someone mentioned how they use a "normal" cellphone instead of a smartphone; their approach is to keep a "phone as a phone, and a computer as a computer."
I find this approach agreeable, since recent exploits, like krack and shellshock, are proving that companies don't need to update firmware when their clientele are neither aware nor interested in advocating for their security and/or privacy. This goes hand-in-hand with the impetus for Purism's librem phone, which offers, albeit at an audacious price, some semblance of freedom -- primarily, through free hardware. Of course, hardware has always been a major crux of the modern cellphone. In addition, consumers face issues like SIM-based exploits, the unexplored exploits in ARM firmware, the inability to hard-disable network hardware. Not to mention that, in the US, a looming vote against net neutrality (which could easily axe many smartphone benefits).
In light of reality, cellphone shopping in contemporary times can get pretty disorienting pretty quickly.
Back to the original sentence.
For the sake of this argument, let's assume that one might "need" a cellphone (in the same way that one "needs" a computer).
If you were shopping for a cellphone in 2017, what would you buy, and why? What criteria do you find the most important when shopping for one? What features or qualities would you never want in a phone?
I'll give a baseline: for personal reasons (few of which are related to exploits and surveillance), I was looking at a Plum Play. Now, let's say ARM has some latent ME-caliber exploit, which I don't know about because ARM is licensed, and because of that, I avoid smartphones -- unfortunately, even dumbphones like the Plum contain a chipset (Spreadtrum sc6531da) which contains an ARM9 processor; a couple other phones ship with the same caveat.
See what I mean?
I'm not actually wearing a tin-foil hat, I promise. I'm just curious what informed users would choose.