When I was unsure where to go, I bought on ebay kleinanzeigen an almost new second-hand Xperia XA2 for less than 100 €, the Sailfish license for 50 € (iirc) and … I was delighted!!!
Not with all details of course (the worst, the edges are bit sharp) but in principle it works absolutely fantastic (a phone for 150!).
My compromise is, that I immediately use the up-to-date Android emulator if necessary (as I mentioned in a Brave post using the F-Droid and Aurora store). Android apps work well and are fast. UI wise it’s a bit a regression but my main usage (map, browser) are full screen and it doesn’t matter. Above all: this spares the terrible compromise to use the restricted
AppStore or be tracked
by Google ad nauseam.
I’d say: try it! – a) the native browser works quite/very well now. Albeit I use almost always the Android based Brave (Firefox would be another option) browser atm, b) battery no complaints, c) fingerprint reader works well (but make sure you “store the fingers” with slightly different angles, d) double tap doesn’t work (afaik) but the button press didn’t bother me (ha! and in this thread I now learned about fingerprint wake-up… it really works incredible!), e) don’t know about text to speach. I recommend to start separate threads with the things you really need (I asked about maps and got super helpful answers!).
I’m completely lost in this difficult decision, so I appreciate all the help I can get.
With 150 (and some time) the decision might not be so difficult. In the worst case you loose 150 (but you could sell the device again, thus maybe you loose 90).
I don’t want to convice you. But as I wrote above, I was and am delighted, wouldn’t hesitate to spend the money for a new Xperia 10 II device now. This said, I really like the smaller size of the XA2 (and if possible I’d go “more smaller”).