Wow, I finally found the incredibly stupid answer to why my phone hasn't had wifi for the past few years when I'm about to retire it. stackoverflow.com/a/58465825/379 (I'd worked around the bootloop with chmod -x /system/bin/wpa_supplicant).
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Who came up with the hideous idea of making this an exception that crashes the whole system (zygote) rather than just turning off wifi or (gasp!) just ignoring the completely non-essential file that's corrupt?!
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Anyway yay, this unblocks a big blocker for moving to new device (being unable to get data off old device easily without a live SIM card in it).
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I only go with cheap devices supported by FOSS Android distros. My replacement is a Moto G7 Plus ($180) which seems like the highest-end-relative-to-price device with good support.
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Pixel 6 is effectively much cheaper than previous Pixels since it finally has a minimum guarantee of 5 years of full support instead of 3.
You could wait until the mid-range Pixel 6a but it will probably downgrade the main camera back to the level of the 5th generation Pixels.