Yo yo!
I have very little technical knowledge so please excuse any senseless mistakes.
I want a phone that I can use that is private and secure for the next couple of years. I understand that new android phones will be made differently so I can’t side load (whatever that means, I just know it is important). I have an iPhone 12 rn but I’d rather leave the iOS ecosystem. Rn I’m typing this message on a pixel 3.
Is a pixel 3 old enough to still be a safe and secure phone that I can side load apps on in the future?
For now, everything is speculation and there’s no way to know how google will implement the new restrictions, for example, google could disable installing apk from the OS, but still allow sideloading from adb, and then f-droid and helper apps could somehow use adb to go around it. It’s still too early to tell.
One thing I can be somewhat certain is that custom roms won’t have this restriction so if you get a phone that supports graphene OS, lineageOS, /e/is, etc, you shouldn’t have to worry with it.
Which leads to another question, do you need google services? I personally don’t but some people are tied to it for some reason, banking apps? Gladly my bank works on the web browser, or else I would just switch banks.
Alternatively you can keep your iphone as a banking/government machine on your other pocket.
As for what phone to get, if you can afford an iphone, you can afford the latest pixel and install graphene OS on it, graphene OS offers the most privacy and security, in certain cases a slightly older device can be cheaper, but note that newer devices offer 7 years support, rather 5, so you have to calculate the cost by dividing the price by the remaining years of support.
Alternatively if you can’t afford a pixel the cheapest (but not so good) solution I think it’s a nothing CMF phone one with /e/OS, but do your own research.