People don't care about this stuff if it's going to waste a ton of their time.
Theres a reason people buy closed source oems and don't care. It's because it works and doesn't waste their time.
Imagine buying an open source car where you can to periodically rebuilt parts of the engine because it was "free". That's absurd, people aren't buying a philosophical journey. they're buying a car.
I'm sure if pinephone or OLPC used entirely free drivers and didn't waste your time to do the same asks people would find it much more agreeable.
I had a conversation with two people recently who got defensive at the idea that controlling the software in your phone should be the norm. As if criticizing Apple's approach to free/libre software is an attack on them as an identity.
The only real problem right now is just lack of apps. Devs build against Android/iOS-only SDKs and use native features that aren't cross platform, so running those apps is mostly out of the question (although I have seen some people running Android apps on their Pinephones!! Need to look into that more).
So GP is saying for apps like that they'd keep an android around but do everything else in a browser.