From the pure technical standpoint, AOSP is better in every way. Fully managed runtime gives better control over resources scheduling, better app sandboxing. Battery life. Uniform hardware support.
All obstacles for it to be open were artificially made by lawyers.
Like Jolla runs Android emulation layer. Same Android but without its benefits.
I made a full comment in this thread. The bottomline is
It all takes years.
Linux phones are around for enthusiasts since Nokia N900 (which was/is a masterpiece) — yet nothing is remotely close to a mainstream phone.
Flatpack is only a piece of the puzzle. I remember in early Android version, an app could increas gyroscope query frequency (i.e. a racing game demanding precise phone tilt), then crash and the gyroscope would drain battery within hours. And again — this is only one example.
The ecosystem must grow — to this day, I cannot set Immich as my default gallery app on LineageOS. So I take a photo, and can’t immediatelly look at it. And Android is already mature. There must be a standard and secure way of exchanging calendar events, notes, photos. Developers must adopt this new ecosystem — it takes years.
The best option we have right now is to pressure Google to allow alternative to Play Services and also sponsor AOSP development outside of Google. There are numerous Linux distros, including commercial ones, I don’t see why we can’t have numerous Android flavors.
It took 6-10 years for Android to take shape.
On Linux, every app has full access to your browsing history, clipboard (passwords), photos with geo-tags, music, list of other installed apps, contacts. Unrestricted battery and network access – it’s a tracking paradise. And all it takes is one supply chain attack on npm install with typical 4000K dependency packages
Mainstream phone as in “I don’t need to debug it via terminal”
The issue I’m pointing at: safe, long battery life, snappy maps while driving is what took AOSP more than 5 years.
It would be very unfortunate to discard all that work and start from scratch.