Honestly I was going to make the switch next gen of phones (been Android since the get go). Glad I waited. At least a Google phone I can flash

All good and well but what do you do when Google decides to the same in few years time when this has blown over?

He will flash.

It really seems like there are a lot of bad faith arguments in this thread. Of all places I expect Hacker News to understand that you can put custom open sourced operating systems on a phone (aka: flashing). If I can't talk nerdy here, then where can I?

Google already makes effort to stop flashing of their phones. Just because you can now doesn't mean you can in the future. What do you do then?

What efforts? Pixels have always been the easiest to flash. Phones have always been hacked. Everything is always hacked. I don't see that changing anytime soon.

The only effort I've seen, after rooting all my phones for eight years, is the recent move to locking things like Google Pay behind an unrooted phone.

this was me except I made the switch after a decade of being away from apple ecosystem. now I am seriously considering going back.