It depends on what you mean by "Android." FOSS distributions such as Lineage or Graphene are unaffected by developer verification or other restrictions, and are truly open in the sense that they are controlled by the user.

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zb3 a day ago | parent [-]

> and are truly open in the sense that they are controlled by the user.

I don't see them altering the permission model, you probably meant the possibility of modifying the system by tools such as Magisk, which indeed make it possible to install software much less restricted..

.. but you can do that on any device with an unlockable bootloader. Graphene/Lineage only remove some Google spyware.

Try to install a Lineage phone app on GrapheneOS to understand what I mean :)

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drnick1 a day ago | parent [-]

> Try to install a Lineage phone app on GrapheneOS to understand what I mean

I am not sure what you mean here. Any Android app should work on both Lineage and Graphene, it's the same base system. Graphene's debloating also goes far beyond removing some Google spyware. By default, there are no Google libraries, Play Store and Google apps.

	▲	zb3 a day ago \| parent [-]
		You can't install the LineageOS phone app (with more modern looks) on GrapheneOS, because: - the package name is already taken and to replace app with the same name the package needs to be signed with the same key which you don't have - even if you modify package name, it's a system privileged app, privileged apps may only be installed by Google/vendors (unless you're recompiling the OS [64GiB RAM needed]) - if you strip all the privileges, functions like call recording won't work. Same for contacts and so on..