> This is how the free market is intended to work. This opens up the range for several android phones (which have a near split in the US, and a majority globally last I recall) to offer better hardware.

Then why isn't this happening? Google's platform is not meaningfully different from Apple's in enough ways to actually make me want to switch. Who's shipping an open phone with amazing cameras that match what the iPhone and Galaxy provide, that also allows sideloading without disabling all of Google's nice software features/cloud storage?