This was one of the reasons I was really sad to see Ubuntu discontinue their phone. It would be nice to have a phone option that could easily install multiple OSes. While Replicant exists it's nowhere near feature parity. I suppose one could use a custom ROM but there are very few phones that work flawlessly with them in my experience. What about options like the ONEPlus phones?

CopperheadOS is de-Googled and works great. Only supports four phones, though: Nexus 5X, Nexus 6P, Pixel, and Pixel XL.

They will probably support the upcoming Pixel 2 as well.

I've experienced success installing Ubuntu Mobile and Sailfish OS using MultiROM on the OnePlus One. It was neat. YMMV.

> It was neat.

Are you back on Android now or why do you speak in past tense? If yes, what are the reasons? I'm considering moving to Ubuntu Phone or Sailfish, that's why I'm asking.

Android had all my information already stored in it, and I didn't think the improvements Sailfish's UI made were worth making the switch (although they really were very nice). Also, Ubuntu Phone didn't really impress me much, and I think it's kind of a dead end now.

It was a great party trick to be able to dual-boot my phone, I got a lot of mileage out of that one. But it wasn't much more helpful to me than that.

Ubuntu touch is not dead yet. It has been picked up by UBports.

PostMarketOS is working on this issue! It's an Alpine Linux distro for phones with Wayland and its own UI kit.

Vouched for your comment; even though PostMarketOS is nowhere near ready for primetime, it is philosophically at least a step in the right direction.

Thanks, must be one of the "go away" bots I keep encountering since my home IP got shitlisted for unclear reasons.

I don't think it's ready for prime time either, but I think it might get to Arch-level usability for a reasonably large set of phones soon. Very promising for middling tinkerers and up IMO.

For a while I've thought about trolling eBay for a PostMarketOS compatible phone, just to keep up with development in a hands-on way. It's cheaper than investing in the Neo900 or the Pyra, though I'm passionate about both of those projects as well.

This is what pushed me to iOS primarily. The simple fact is Google is incentivized directly to spy on you, and (increasingly) Apple is using the fact that they do not spy on you as a differentiator. They make their money on the hardware and via iTunes; they don't sell your data, and oftentimes don't even have access to your data by their own design.

Apple doesn't have 100% of my trust but of the OEM phone makers out their right now, I think by a wide margin they're the most trustworthy.

True, but OTOH iOS's closedness puts you in a weak position where if Apple changes their mind you can't do anything about it. It's annoying, too, because you need the horrific iTunes software and its cert infrastructure as a gateway to your phone.

It's really paradoxical that a closed source O/S is a pro-privacy option vs. Linux-based Android of all things.

Well they've made a first step to de-cluttering iTunes by moving iOS app management out of the thing, as well as a few other bits, so hopefully it will be less of a dumpster fire in the near future.

As to the fact that you're at Apple's mercy, that's true, but I don't see how that's particularly different with Android and Google, the only difference being with Android you often don't get their latest software update. ;)

And yes, definitely a paradox but I think the primary reason is that people tend to think of Android as being a Google product, when it isn't, Google just bought it. If you use pure Android on a rooted device you could probably secure it pretty effectively, except that software updates then become more complicated, plus the process of rooting a phone, while not as complex as jailbreaking an iOS device, is quite challenging and above what the vast, vast majority of users are willing to do.

>Android is a hopeless cause

You've been living in some kind of echo chamber my brother, especially if you think Apple worries about encryption just because they want your privacy. It's only the ubiquitous mobile device OS on the planet. Do you ever want to do something fun with a raspberry pi?