With the recent changes to how Google is doing things with Android, is it even worth it anymore? Should I just accept whatever version of Android comes with whatever phone or are custom ROMs still worth it? Assuming they still exist after all of this, idk what’s going on.
Well, I already own a Pinephone and I can tell you it’s not a viable alternative. It’s awesome and great for tinkering. But try and use it for 2 days in real life and you’ll buy another Pixel and fit it with GrapheneOS, just to get on with your day. At least that’s what I did. It has minor hardware woes, major software issues, there is no modern standby and you just won’t get a notification if your friends change plans. And it’s 50 more annoyances like this each day. You constantly need to work around things like not being able to buy a train ticket. And the browser is as sluggish as on a first/second gen Android from 18 years ago. And a Librem isn’t substancially better, just 3x the price.
(And I’m not sure about Rossman’s take on Purism. They definitely made some bad decisions and severe mistakes. It is hard to do this. Projects run over budget. But it’s not necessarily all malice. I think Rosmann exaggerates it a bit for Youtube clicks. It’s more some stupid (and very questionable) business decisions. But there is more nuance to it.)