at least they allow you to use other app stores or even download them directly from the app developer.
The bigger one is that the base system is still open source. That ensures a baseline of freedom. Google services are so intertwined that it’s hardly possible to really live without but it is. Imagine a de-appled iPhone.
nothing about android’s licensing could make it impossible to make it impossible to not lock it down
Sorry, I cannot decipher that. If you mean, this doesn’t prevent phone makers to lock down their bootloaders: sure. But I just need to find one that doesn’t and by an open source Android there will always be an image to flash. At least it’s infinitely better than Apple’s walled garden.
The bigger one is that the base system is still open source. That ensures a baseline of freedom. Google services are so intertwined that it’s hardly possible to really live without but it is. Imagine a de-appled iPhone.
that’s not how this works… nothing about android’s licensing could make it impossible to make it impossible to not lock it down
Sorry, I cannot decipher that. If you mean, this doesn’t prevent phone makers to lock down their bootloaders: sure. But I just need to find one that doesn’t and by an open source Android there will always be an image to flash. At least it’s infinitely better than Apple’s walled garden.
Unfortunately sooner or later Play Integrity will make this unfeasible in practice.