If a product contains linux without user control or root or ability to change the software or OS it is not terribly different form one which contains a microsoft NT kernel or one of the closed commercial real time OSs.
The question is who is the actual user, a telephone company, a national government, a search engine company, or the end user, it is a kind of tivo-ization(see below).
It can be a mix of all of the above, between the FOSS components de-googled android derivative distros can be reasonably non-google and telephone company friendly, but that is pretty much a hack and bending of the initial intent, de-googled android is to get easy hardware compatibility but is somewhat akin to running windows programs on Wine, it works but is not functional by design rather by hack.
Fully documented select hardware on a fully FOSS stack is top to bottom is by design for the user, even if it doesn't have the cutting edge performance found on secrets and lies hack-compatible components provide in the boot and drivers part of the stack inside a hacked OS surrounding them like a mostly FOSS android build might.
Another thing Pinephone does which you will NEVER see in an android is it does not provide wiring for DMA(direct memory access) to the modularized modem, even though our Pine ax-25 modem runs a separate android derived OS but it is not able to interact directly with the system memory, we also have some great work on making a mostly cleaned and neutered FOSS software stack on the modem module. That standard modem chip on all apple and android devices is another full computer which the designer and maybe the telephone company or national government control and the user DOES NOT! But it does have full access to your system memory and every running process; control and surveillance access are built in and cannot be disabled.
We also have the paranoia switches(I can take credit for these which are inherited from back in the Neo900 design phase) which let you hardware power-disable the modem, cameras, and BT/WiFi, there are only niche situations these are important but once we have Lora or POCSAG pager input it would allow a completely radio-silent untrackable mobile device.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_o...patibility
The question is who is the actual user, a telephone company, a national government, a search engine company, or the end user, it is a kind of tivo-ization(see below).
It can be a mix of all of the above, between the FOSS components de-googled android derivative distros can be reasonably non-google and telephone company friendly, but that is pretty much a hack and bending of the initial intent, de-googled android is to get easy hardware compatibility but is somewhat akin to running windows programs on Wine, it works but is not functional by design rather by hack.
Fully documented select hardware on a fully FOSS stack is top to bottom is by design for the user, even if it doesn't have the cutting edge performance found on secrets and lies hack-compatible components provide in the boot and drivers part of the stack inside a hacked OS surrounding them like a mostly FOSS android build might.
Another thing Pinephone does which you will NEVER see in an android is it does not provide wiring for DMA(direct memory access) to the modularized modem, even though our Pine ax-25 modem runs a separate android derived OS but it is not able to interact directly with the system memory, we also have some great work on making a mostly cleaned and neutered FOSS software stack on the modem module. That standard modem chip on all apple and android devices is another full computer which the designer and maybe the telephone company or national government control and the user DOES NOT! But it does have full access to your system memory and every running process; control and surveillance access are built in and cannot be disabled.
We also have the paranoia switches(I can take credit for these which are inherited from back in the Neo900 design phase) which let you hardware power-disable the modem, cameras, and BT/WiFi, there are only niche situations these are important but once we have Lora or POCSAG pager input it would allow a completely radio-silent untrackable mobile device.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tivoization
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_and_o...patibility