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there's irony in having "degoogled" Phones built upon a platform that is at the technical discretion of Google, but you'd discount a lot of mindshare that grew around Android to say GNU/Linux is the only way long term. I don't know if the community could sustain a AOSP hardfork (or if it's necessary), but combining a mainline kernel with open firmware is a possibility for Android handhelds too.

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The software is not a problem, the hardware is. You should be able to run AOSP on Pinephone and Librem 5 just fine. They do not depend on the proprietary drivers and can run mainline Linux.

the road to nowhere is proprietary firmware for hardware, not if it's running an aosp customrom or gnu/linux. I wanted to make this distinction as your parent comment read as if the gnu/linux part is a precondition. I agree on the downside of having less or no say in android product direction, but it's up to the firmware (and carriers frankly as they control the mobile towers) when obsolescence for a device happens.

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