Yeah, while I am loathe to trust Google again, will never be buying another Apple hardware again too - I used an alternative map app on an old iDevice and wrote them a 5-star review for their good features, for being better than Apple and Google maps (in some aspects) and especially for still supporting older devices. A new update for the app was released and suddenly I couldn't install it because App Store reported that my ios was outdated and not compatible with the new release. So I revised the review for the app to 2-stars pointing out they had suddenly dropped support for older iDevices which was one of their main attractive features. The developers of the app contacted me asking me to reconsider the review. According to them, they had released the latest update for the app for the "outdated" ios version / older iDEvices too, but Apple deliberately sat on it without approving it for the App store. According to them, Apple hasn't clarified the issue. If the developers are being truthful (and I do believe them), this is a deliberate and malicious act by Apple to push planned obsolescence of older iDevices.

> Most google devices have an unlockable bootloader.

But that's not the case for other manufacturers, including ones way more popular than Google. Especially Samsung.

On average, a new Android device is almost as locked as iPhone is.

They exist. But they don't support Android apps that are unfortunately necessary. For example, any phone without WhatsApp or banking apps support is dead on arrival in Europe.

How are /e/OS, GrapheneOS, or LineageOS alternatives?

Google can kill them in an instant, they need the AOSP source to survive.

[dead]

Harmony is just another closed-down ecosystem controlled by a single company. It's already worse than Android with its late source releases.

Though, as the narcs are quick to point out, Android 'is' Linux.

So really, the alternative is proper GNU/Linux (or as I've recently taken to calling it...)

Related recent discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50051530

Yes, let's throw away a fully mature smartphone OS (AOSP) and replace it by something that does not even have proper app sandboxing. /s

The alternative are other AOSP-based OSes like GrapheneOS and Lineage. Once they are used widely enough and funded enough, they could fork AOSP when needed. In some sense they have already soft-forked in that they use major and QPR2 releases, but put a lot of patches on top to fix issues, improve security, etc.

GrapheneOS has an estimated 500,000 active installs now, apparently LineageOS has 1.4M active installs. Probably around two orders of magnitude more than traditional Linux desktop-based phones, which have been trying since, checking notes, Maemo in 2005?