There are plenty of open source third party stories such as FDroid and Aptoide and Amazon's own store. On Android, you can even load APKs directly.

Agree in principle, though can't we get that by just allowing unauthorized sources?

I guess you don't get the relative security of app stores, and there's no widespread culture of free apps on phones like on PCs.

I'd really love, not a new phone or OS, but just an app store that works under a different model. Cheap or free for developers to post, but curated to exclude the most predatory forms of monetization.

I thought about this more this week.

How do we solve the trusted app problem on PCs?

We don't install whatever random thing comes up in google. We look for a trusted recommendation.

App stores are just teaching us that it's ok to install any app, which is not necessarily the best security model.