So, I got another cheap phone, the cheapest I could find, (a used ZTE Tempo X N9137), but it's locked so that only the previous user can open it. I did discover this though:
- phones with a qualcomm chipset have a special mode called emergency download, that provides for reading and writing all the storage, but one might have to add the vendor/product id to the qcserial module in linux to get access.