Then do what I do when buying your next phone, find a custom ROM you like, check their "comparability" page, find devices that are fully compatible, preferably officially supported (community build usually work fine as well) and use that as a shopping list when browsing for phones.

[–] PanGodofPanic@lemmy.blahaj.zone 4 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Open source Android is a thing??? TIL that might be my solution to this long term since I sideload apps regularly.

[–] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 5 points 1 day ago

Search for your device name and "custom ROM" to see what's out there. Some are completely Google free, others retain different levels of Google play support, including downloading existing purchases.

[–] zarenki@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

No custom ROM on a recent smartphone technically gives you a fully open source Android system when they rely on vendor-provided proprietary blobs in order for basic hardware functionality to work at all. Unless you want to go without a modem, GPS, and likely more depending on your model, at which point it's functionally no longer a smartphone.

Open-source custom ROMs are at least far more open-source than the alternative in most of the ways that matter most, including the ability to change the code in order to remove app installation restrictions, to avoid Google's telemetry, etc.

[–] DrDystopia@lemy.lol 2 points 21 hours ago

Would the proprietary blobs in the baseband hardware stop the end user from installing software, which is the topic of concern?

If no, is this a irrelevant "achtually"-reply?