Agreed, it would be nice to have an actual conversation about the issues in the mobile market right now instead of pointing to one of the 2 major companies, that nobody should really be 100% confident about.

IMO both Google and Apple aren't saints. Apple had a fairly similar headline in 2011[1]. Now watch people here on HN explain why that was completely different. It's a guarantee.

We really should be focusing coming up with ideas on what we can do. My friend for example (and this isn't a perfect solution) but he bought 2 phones, one of these for calling:

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/41AwGb3pKCL...

(extremely thin in real life)

And then he caries a smartphone for encrypted chat apps etc. He removed a bunch of hardware chips from the smartphone so even if you put a simcard it it doesn't connect anywhere. Also the microphone was removed and some other things. It works great. At first he had it with the simcard still in, but he wanted more privacy. Personally, I would have kept a 4g only simcard or something, it's kind of a trade-off because now he can only chat on wifi.

It's far from perfect, but at least he's trying something.

[1]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/apr/20/iphone-tr...