Google Play Services forced a > 100M update (carrier data!) on my KitKat phone making it slow as molasses.

Would Oreo Go run? 512M ram, 1.2GHz dual core.

Probably no! You can brick your phone if you try to load the wrong rom on it. See if lineageos do a rom for your specific phone (make and model). That might work.

For everybody: KitKat = Android 4.4.

Personally, don't do anything if you need usb drive access - Google got fed up with people hacking via usb drives and made that much more difficult in 5.0.

Your phone is probably 7-8 years old. Don't go later Android, go Lineage. And I'd check the market where you are for secondhand phones. It might be better yo upgrade

Really depends on the phone: make, model. We need more information.
There's a very small chance it will run an alternative OS.
Simply upgrading Android - no, that's not possible.

What do you mean by drive access? It's a phone with a USB charging port?

Used phones appear too abused for me. I handle mine lightly.

Lineageos would have to be LEAN and compatible to be worthwhile.

The other option I considered is return it to factory spec and 'rebuilding' it to its current state, without the dreaded update.

Wiser would probably be to acquire a new phone.

[QUOTEJASlinux]Wiser would probably be to acquire a new phone.[/QUOTE]

Agreed if you can afford it. I found good bargains on last year's models, so when the Samsung Galaxy 8 was out, I got the S7 Edge. There's also lightly used 1-2 year old phones sold when businesses (e.g. mobile devs, etc) buy the latest models, and these are usually in mobile shops.

That's not the main/only reason mobile devices (not only Android) switched to MTP (and hacking was still very much possible after Android switched to MTP).

No, one problem with connecting storage as a USB drive is that it can't be accessed by the phone meanwhile.
Maybe there would have been better ways to solve that particular problem, but the world is stuck with MTP now.

You can say that agin.
After one year, about a fifth of the original price for most consumer models. So, your run-of-the mill OnePlus or Huawei or whatever the current brand is, originally announced for 350 credits - wait a year, get it for 70 credits on ebay. I've been doing this for years.
Recommendation: check for LineageOS support before you buy one.

We don't get them that cheap in this neck of the woods. There's a market because businesses trade up the phones of their mobile devs, etc but the demand for last year's model is fairly high.

It's the internet, man!
You can, unless ebay & co. have different sales conditions for your "neck of the woods".
But I admit, I might have exaggerated slightly. I did get all my phones for under 100€, but I might have been lucky, or the models might have been a little older than 1 year (still LineageOS supported though, always!), or they might have been cheaper originally.
Anyhow, here's what you can get in the 70-100€ range
On ebay.ie
On ebay.com
I set item location to Europe for both.
The results look pretty similar to me.

I've pretty much given up on ebay.

I buy most stuff from the UK (English speaking European offers are sparse). As the UK(Or US/China) are not in the EU I get a ~30% 'global shipping' charge slapped on, ostensibly 'in case we have to pay import duty.' For a fact, they do not have to pay duty either way, as the laws of both countries determine that. But Ebay take this charge, and never refund it, and it becomes a 30% disincentive to buy.

Amazon's disincentive is only ~20%.

^ Oh yes, I had it in the back of my mind... some reason why I don't use ebay anymore...
Here's a similar request to amazon...
Not that I'd use amazon either if I could avoid it.

Here's a similar search from our "national ebay" and a general-purpose online ad rag.
I know first hand of one case where somebody with no knowledge of the language bought a device there and asked for it to be sent to somewherte else in the EU (and I have done so myself with other sites).

My point being: it is possible to get recent models very cheaply, and it's pointless to complain about or dismiss this or that because options always exist.

Amazon.com doesn't deliver to Europe's cloud urinal (Which Ireland is fast becoming).

A similar search on Amazon.co.uk brings up cheaper stuff, but then you get down to what phones can you trust to be well built?

Anyhow, phones are not the issue. Try a search for a 'powered usb hub' or '2.5" usb-3.x ssd & case' I have recently had issues with both. It's worth going to a local shop for a phone, and having a come-back.

In the case of the hub, I didn't want it feeding power back into the usb port, and in the case of the ssd, I didn't want power surges from the ssd freaking the usb port.

I think what business_kid means about drive access is accessing the phone's storage via USB.

That isn't a problem in KitKat. The problem in KitKat is the hardware supports micro-USB for storage, but the os disables it.

You're left with built-in storage, most of which is taken up by the os, or your Drive account which doesn't fully support old Android versions.

OK, I see. Things are acceptable (online purchases are possible without much hassle or rip-off) everywhere in Europe, EU or not, except Ireland.

I am amused to see my post quoted as "rant," which wasn't quite what I said.

Ireland is now the only English-speaking EU country, and Ebay sellers don't bother catering for it. We never did well teaching languages at school, so most need English. We all had compulsory Irish tuition from infancy, but they taught it so badly, very few Irish people can speak it. It was knowledge bulimia - learn it for the test, then forget it. The actual time that people learned Irish was when they went to Europe and wanted to bitch about someone. They dare not use English, because it was too widely known, so they resurrected their Gaelic.

As for EU or not, there's 33 countries in Europe and 27 in the EU, and others with trade agreements. Very few are left, so it's hard to name them. Switzerland, Norway … ?