
Why are vanilla AOSP Android ROMs not popular? - nextos
I&#x27;m a bit concerned with data collection by FANG companies, and thus still using a Nokia N9 and a Jolla Phone that run Meego and Sailfish, respectively. They are beautiful but dead platforms, so increasingly difficult to employ as daily drivers.<p>Android has matured a lot and is a quite nice platform these days. Plus, there&#x27;s a wealth of good quality open software in F-Droid to replace GApps.<p>Till Linux touch-oriented userlands mature a bit with hardware like Librem, if that option ever becomes a reality, a de-Googled Android ROM is probably the only practical choice if you want an open platform without Google.<p>While I like LineageOS, departure from upstream and lack of reproducibility building ROMs makes me a bit nervous. Since vanilla Android (AOSP) plus F-Droid is pretty nice to use, why is it not popular?<p>That&#x27;s even the option that Tor Project recommends: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.torproject.org&#x2F;mission-improbable-hardening-android-security-and-privacy<p>CopperheadOS was amongst the only ROMs that followed AOSP pretty closely, plus additional mitigations. Since COS recently imploded, there&#x27;s not much else to choose from. But even self-compiling said ROMs is not too difficult for manufacturers that release tidy device trees and good documents, such as Google or Sony:<p>https:&#x2F;&#x2F;developer.sony.com&#x2F;develop&#x2F;open-devices&#x2F;guides&#x2F;aosp-build-instructions&#x2F;build-aosp-android-p-9-0-0#tutorial-step-2
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dylz
Hardware, ease of use, setup, ...

A lot more people would flash Lineage, orders of magnitude less would build
their own from source.

F-Droid does not offer many of the apps people use. Extremely privacy
focused/'zero-tracking' is a lot fewer than 'privacy aware, little to no
tracking' people.

Very few devices that permit bootloader unlocking.

Even devices that normally permit bootloader unlocking (at least in the US)
will forbid it if bought from a carrier.

For example, phones from Verizon Wireless (US) often do not qualify for
bootloader unlocking specifically (even if it is not leased, not financed,
purchased full retail), such as on the htcdev website - the same model
purchased elsewhere will be unlockable.

