Sharing some field notes after buying a couple of used Pixels out of Japan to flash GrapheneOS on. If you want a de-Googled phone without paying full retail, the Japanese secondhand market is one of the cheaper places to look — but there are traps, so here’s what I learned.
Why Japan. Phones churn fast there, and the domestic secondhand market (Mercari JP, Yahoo! Auctions, and the “junk” corner at Hard-Off) is deep and cheap. Used Pixel 6a / 7a bodies in good shape turn up regularly for a fraction of what the same model costs used in the West.
The bootloader trap — read this first. GrapheneOS only supports Pixels with an unlockable bootloader. Carrier-sold units (docomo / au / SoftBank) have historically shipped with the bootloader locked and non-unlockable, and some are still under a network-use restriction (残債 / ネットワーク利用制限). Buy SIM-free units — ideally ones originally sold through the Google Store Japan. Ask the seller for the model number and confirm 赤ロム保証 (no-blacklist guarantee) before paying.
Other caveats:
- “Junk” (ジャンク) means untested — assume nothing works until proven. Fine for a cheap flashing project, risky as a daily driver.
- Check LTE/5G band overlap for your country. Pixels are mostly global, but verify.
- Most sellers are domestic-only and won’t ship abroad, so you need a forwarding/proxy service to buy, consolidate and re-ship.
I’ve been using OneMall as the proxy/forwarder because it aggregates the JP marketplaces behind one checkout and handles consolidation. For reference these are the live listings I watch: used Pixel bodies and the broader SIM-free phone pool.
Not affiliated with any of the marketplaces — just passing on what worked. Happy to answer questions if anyone’s tried the same route.