I think that the main problem is that android has a lot of weird modifications that are not consistent with the rest of linux distros. The user data is suddenly in /data instead of /home, theres no package manager, no systemd (for better or worse), and there's hella lotta security gotchas, for example call recording is impossible without root as far as I know. I'm not saying that Android is not hackable, but it's a different type of hackability than desktop linux, you have to learn it all over again and in my opinion it's much harder to master than desktop linux.

I've been on ubports for 3 years and while it also has some weird caveats like read only rootfs, no working package manager (due to read-only fs. however ubports has pretty cool support for lxc containers where you can use apt). Due to chronic lack of time I haven't been able to sit down on my phone to play with it a bit (for example id like to install waydroid), but it seems a lot easier than android. For example, while there isn't an app for call recording, some guy worked around it by writing a systemd user service as a workaround[1]. This is exactly the type of thing I'm thinking about when talking "linux phone".

For me as a linux user, the difference if ubports was a human, I'd think that perhaps they were sick, whereas if android was a human, i'd shoot them in the face :)

[1] https://forums.ubports.com/post/75157

Yeah, just need to decide where to start the fork. The larger problem is radio firmware. FCC regs were the initial excuse, for wifi and Bluetooth too, but we need to open up the source for all of these and allocate money for enforcement if we are truly worried people are going to start adding wifi channels etc. Open firmware phone radios would let you do things like truly turning off the radio when wifi was present, no gps ping even.

You’re not wrong. The thing that bothers me is that AOSP is being developed behind close doors and controlled by a single company which wields way too much power and control over our daily lives, and which has a track record of abusing that power.

The portions of SailfishOS specific to it including the user interface and application layer are nearly entirely closed source, unlike the open source Android Open Source Project (AOSP). SailfishOS has far worse privacy, security, functionality and usability than the Android Open Source Project. It isn't possible to make a fork improving it due to it not being open source like AOSP.

You can run desktop apps on GrapheneOS including on a desktop monitor via the desktop mode with free form windows. There's support for non-native apps via hardware-based virtualization. These features are experimental but already work pretty well.

There's a new Jolla Phone in pre-marketing phase right now (almost 9000 phones have been pre-ordered so far). First device deliveries are scheduled for this summer and this should easily be the new benchmark for officially supported SailfishOS devices.

The situation with Sony Xperia devices is not great, the best experience is still on the X10III (from 2021 I think) and there are significant issues with the support of 10 IV and V generation devices (a free beta release is available for those as well).

It seems that recently there has been quite a lot of buzz in the Sailfish community compared to the past few years. In the public repos there are some interesting contributions like xdg-shell support for Lipstick, which looks set to enable compiling many previously unavailable Linux apps natively if that will actually be integrated in an upcoming OS version.

They have been underfunded for a decade now, with some unfortunate consequences - the web browser is based on Gecko 91.

Jolla mishandled the funds they got for the tablets, it went bankrupt and bought up by a company connected to the Russian state. Jolla lied a lot during these events and tried to hide what happened, and I don't think that's an acceptable thing to do when the main selling point of your product is privacy and trust. AFAIK they recently got bankrupted again and bought by the original owners, but it's hard to rebuild trust.