Android

Excuse me sir, are you living in the past?

I've read your replies in here. Some of your requests are misguided. You want Android 8 or 9 because anything newer will come with "more garbage"? That simply isn't true, and there are a plethora of useful features that only arrived in Android 12 onwards.

Any bloatware can be dealt with, any animations you deem superfluous can be disabled, you can change out the launcher for something with zero bloat like Lynx.

You simply won't find anything half reasonable to use that doesn't have a front camera. Stick some tape over it if you are worried.

Ignoring the rest, the best deal you will find somewhere within that price range is a Galaxy S20 FE 5G.

I just bought two brand new units for my parents on ebay for $370AUD which = $250 USD.

This was the last flagship (or flagship adjacent) Samsung with a MicroSD slot. Samsung is well catered for by most of the debloating scripts around github via ADB or you can apply root method and get it clean as a whistle.

SOC is a Snapdragon 865, it supports 5G global bands really well, the cameras kick arse but aren't crazy (12MP), it has a really great wide-angle sensor too. It's got a higher refresh rate but low resolution, so the sizeable battery leads to an extremely generous use time. Multiple days for someone like you.

Honestly I'm not sure why'd you'd like to spend $200 on an absolute piece of junk as per your specs when you could spend $250 on a new in-box device that will blow your socks off.

no front camera

That sounds impossible, I don't think that even exists now.

Android 8 or 9

Really, next thing you'll want are Windows 7 PCs? All these OSes are no longer supported, no one is going to sell that new.

Have you considered buying a used phone?

There are some pretty good deals on ebay.

Got curious with your specs and I plugged it in to gsmarena advance search filter.

I got 10 results, though most of it was released in 2020. The latest one released (Jan 2022) was Nokia C100 priced at USD59.99. I think it has most of your wishlist, though I'm not familiar with ARM64 architecture and OTG wasn't a filter option.

Good luck with your search!

Do you want a dragon as well with your phone?

Have you tried https://m.gsmarena.com/search.php3? ?

With those spec I'd say go witha a used samsung high end from 201x, I'm thinking S4 but there might be better options, around that time period in general. You won't find usb C ports on them though.

I think finding a phone that check all you boxes will be near impossibile

@monkey011 You could comfortably get a https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_galaxy_s9-8966.php on ebay for that budget.

Then put this on it https://doc.e.foundation/devices/starlte

The no front camera is going to eliminate a lot of good target options for you. I've personally had a ton of success using Motorola for budget android phones. In fact, I was exclusively on Motorola for the past 10 or so years until I recently moved to a Pixel.

Your best bet is to get a pixel 6a and flash CalyxOS on it, there is no way you're getting a modern brand new phone (which is what I gathered from other comments), with these requirements. Calyx gets rid of everything you'd call "more garbage", comes with all the tools you'd need for a secure phone and allows you to disable access to hardware such as the microphone and camera. I also read you didn't want custom ROMs.

Here's the deal, any phone made by a company with more employees than two is going to have some sort of data collection in it, if you want a phone that doesn't have any, either get a Linux phone (which won't do anything you want it to) or a pixel with a security and privacy oriented rom on it. Some other options are lineageOS, comes with opt-in data collection, not opt-out, has years of security updates and supports a great deal of modern phones, doesn't come with Google apps by default and if you want, you can disable internet access to apps individually, grapheneOS also exists, similar to CalyxOS. If none of this is good enough for you, then idk what to tell you, but you're not going to find what you're looking for exactly.

The modern android world can't give you a high end 16:9 60hz phone with 2gb of ram, no front camera and 8 hours of screen on time and official security and feature updates for 8 years, that's simply not how it works anymore, you can say you want something like that, but unless you make it yourself it's not going to appear out of thin air.

I hope this post wasn't too rude, but with requirements like these you're setting yourself up for disappointment, I made this post to make you realise how impossible this actually is.

Oh and for DS games, crazy idea, buy a DSi and install unlaunch on it, it'll launch any DS game you want and it'll cost you 40 USD at most

Such low specs should be easily available on the used market well under $100. As to "no bloatware", see if you can find one supported by lineageOS or another alternative system.

I don't think anyone will make any predictions about the next 8 years. Replaceable battery was fairly common at the time they made phones with the specs you are looking for.

A bigger problem will be "no front camera" (almost unheard of), and USB C on a phone with Android 8 or 9, only 2 GB RAM and 16 GB storage. Most of these will be so old that they come with Micro-USB.