But it won't matter what most Americans think if there are just two choices and both are designed so that only a few can modify the OS.
There's also the pinephone of course, but "Most Americans" object to the pinephone so severely that they'll offer to buy you an iphone if you switch to one.
(Say someone or some corp sends you a two-factor SMS that includes some identifying data)
Purism doesn't have this solved either.
And from the PoV of governement surveillance, lol. Just forget using a PSTN.
And whether you've revealed your identity or not is in fact binary. This issue is not about security, but privacy.
No, it's not. It is equal to the price/time to find it out. Even though you are right that Purism does not protect from that fully, they do make it harder/more expensive.
Cellphones such as the PinePhone or the Librem aren't intended to hide that you are you; that will be discovered in hours anyway and it's not even worth attempting; they're rather intended as a way to avoid direct data access and surveillance by corporations and governments. That is, they will immediately know it's you and where you are with coarse accuracy, but what you are up to is another story: they need to access the data directly by sneaking malicious software into your phone, which its Open Source nature will made extremely difficult to achieve.
My expectation is that most Americans would have little interest in a detailed discussion of the Pinephone (so they would take a pass based on a brief description) and not care if you had one and thought it was great.
Only that they do have the majority market share at 60% https://gs.statcounter.com/vendor-market-share/mobile/united...
Statcounter uses active devices, so it seems like a much better indicator of what people are actually using, assuming they are able to get a good sample set.
They do according to some sources [0]. By all accounts they have the majority when you breakdown phones by brand (as compared to platform). By every account they’re nearing 50% in the US.
Also, among the US youth market they have close to 90% [1] so fortunately the general share will keep rising. (I say fortunately because I look forward to the US being able to regulate their policies.)
[0] https://www.statista.com/statistics/266572/market-share-held...
[1] https://appleinsider.com/articles/20/10/06/us-teen-iphone-ow...
Largest market share would differ for brands and platforms though.
My broader point, that the exaggeration makes it difficult to understand what they are getting at, survives quibbling about what the words mean, and probably if some platform that isn't Apple has a 40% market share (Rather than just a brand). 40% is a big chunk when the starting line is that everyone will react severely.
I fear this, although regulation would be welcome. Already, the AppStore is a bigger revenue generator than PlayStore even though Apple holds about a 27% share worldwide. If a big market like US, went all in on iPhone. I fear that we will have an app problem in Android and other free Android forks, which eventually might kill competitiveness of any non iOS platform.