Auster

Any with good hardware as long as you can switch to stable and community-made ROMs.

If you like reading books, comics, etc, maybe Librera Reader?

Dunno how it is on Google Play, but it’s available FOSS and DRM free outside of it:
https://f-droid.org/packages/com.foobnix.pro.pdf.reader/

Same as the past 10 or so years, from what I can tell.

You also need to find instructions specific to your device on how to unlock the bootloader, and a TWRP specific to your device. From there, you do a clean flash through TWRP (erasing certain partitions and then installing the new ROM), and then, you should be good to go.

First, I’d suggest flashing a community system ROM. OEM systems are both very bloated, and stop being supported much earlier than community ones, so they’re not ideal unless you need to use it with some banking app or the sort. And if you don’t need Google’s services (de-Google, anyone?), I strongly recommend going for a vanilla system instead of a Gapps one.

Now, as stated in MargotRobbie’s comment, one good use is as a media player. If you can sideload stuff like VLC and Librera Reader, you should be covered.

You can also use it for some lighter gaming, if that’s your thing, as there’s plenty of emulators, wrappers and engine implementations for Android.

You can also use it for running servers, if you do this sort of stuff.

And if you like to test around with softwares, a spare Android device is pretty good to have.

Dunno when/how a game is classified a classic, but since PS2 is from the 6th gen, guess I have some suggestions! =D
Ultimate Ninja 5 is pretty cool, I think. Don’t like the anime much, but gameplay loop still feels pretty good nowadays. Only released on PAL and NTSC-J regions, though.
Dragon Ball - Budokai Tenkaichi 2 is also pretty fun, coming from someone that also doesn’t like the series it comes from.
I guess Godzilla: Unleashed could count as fighting game too? If so, I recommend it too.

I don’t mind necro as long as it isn’t obvious spam, so don’t worry. =D
(besides, Reddit also had a lot of this, where pertinent replies would only appear a long time after the posts were made)

But thanks! The game looks pretty interesting, going by the promotional materials, and the store page also mentions it has both English and Japanese, so likely at least texts will be translated.

Xiaomi mobiles aren’t available in the US

Maybe the OP could import one? Or are there sanctions even for importing?

On that matter, if you haven’t dug on the topic yet and if I may suggest, look for Linux systems (“distros”) with either the Xfce or Wayland desktop environments, since they’re some of the lightest around (Xfce being the most stable of the two, but Wayland seems pretty promising already).

Likewise from Brazil and likewise would rather see whatsapp gone from my devices. Sadly, I still need it for work and other official matters. Still, I’m slowly but surely abandoning whatsapp, by either convincing people I talk to to migrate to other, less anti-consumer services, migrating myself to sister groups or alternatives in other services, and/or abandoning a group or chat altogether. And all the while being vocal about it by raising my concerns about whatsapp (just saying “I don’t like it and you should move too” can be pretty counter-intuitive with our countrymen). Hopefully, this way, I can drop it altogether once it becomes clearly irrelevant.

But this reminds me I haven’t deleted/left any chats for a few days, so I’ll take the opportunity to do just that.

Perhaps the reasoning changes from person to person, but for me, it goes along the lines of this image posted, oddly enough, on a memes page:
https://lemmy.ml/pictrs/image/cbae2e12-4fe0-45c4-8657-f033da6eab20.png

The majority of posts on Reddit are also like that. Perhaps a curse of a feed-oriented forum (or whatever this type of social media is called)

Oh. Oopsie. e.e"

Just checked. Initial release was in 2016. Maybe I confused it with a previous title from IF/CH.

Yup, like this!

Grid-based, dungeon crawler RPG (a mouthful, I know). The most recent titles in this genre I remember are the Mary Skelter trilogy, but the first game is about 10 years old already.

If you absolutely must get something from Google Play, I suggest Aurora Store, which acts as an alternative frontend for Google Play, so you don’t have to have GApps installed.

If you have use for command line programs, Termux, a terminal emulator, is a great option, and it also works with root.

For reading eBooks, I also have a recommendation, Librera Reader (but I’ll check the OP’s recommendation too).

Material Files and Simple File Manager are great file browsing tools. But if you need a file browser for root specifically, I recommend Material Files specifically.

This is just a hypothesis, since I never dug on the subject, but considering sparkling beverages overall, at least in my side of the globe (Brazil), use carbon dioxide, which, when mixed with water, becomes carbonic acid, which, when mixed with basic compounds, becomes salt, I’d imagine sparkling water would be a good way to increase salt levels in the body, which could perhaps be bad in your case, since you need water for medical reasons.

The only one I knew (before checking the other comments lol) is WinLaunch:

https://github.com/MrC0rrupted/WinLaunch

https://winlaunch.org/

Plus a surprisingly decent CBZ/CBR reader, if you like reading comics in a TV.