It is very puzzling. We have a plethora of brands from chinese, korean, european and american companies to kickstarter-funded projects to reskinned odm designs in developing markets,- all vying and clawing at each other to stand out in an oversaturated market with more cameras, more pixels, more features like AI, and filters and what-not. Yet not one of these companies think to release a phone that proffers to give the best rooting experience or Lineage OS compatibility - or better yet, comes with LineageOS out-of-the-box.
I think one of the main reasons is that many apps such as banking or drm-protected apps, which are usually only offered through the official app stores, will refuse to work on a rooted or custom imaged phone. You'd have to go through youtube tutorials and have to download the software through third-party mirrors, and that's not a feature that will sell phones.
Another reason is that giving users the option to root and unlock is possible only after ditching whatever agremeent is in place with Google. So, no Play support for this vendor at all means no sales to normal markets.
Going deeper in conspiracy theories, Google would drop Qualcomm/Mediatek from the ecosystem if they'll ever allow a single SoC licensee to do such phone.
> Yet not one of these companies think to release a phone that proffers to give the best rooting experience or Lineage OS compatibility - or better yet, comes with LineageOS out-of-the-box.
I reckon at least as profitable (probably more) as every other forgettable model in the currently oversaturated market all trying to target the same segment in the race to the bottom.
We don't care about cameras or games or ai. We are happy with last years specs (or older). The after-sales-support, maintenance, updates can be offloaded to the community. Sales will probably be online and not in brick-and-mortar stores since it would be difficult to market to regular people. So Marketing budget can be minimal. Just do a couple of talks at foss events. It might not be the kind of phone that gets Marques BrownLee excited but the FOSS community (which still has clout and influence among tech-elites) will be more than happy to do the evangelism for a phone that is 100% open-source and doesn't spy on you. Since sales are online it could be a kick-starter or pre-orders in batches. So 100% cash upfront before production. It could even be the halo phone for the next phone unicorn startup (ala OnePlus).
I believe Fairphone used to ship models with LineageOS out of the box—their new models optionally ship /e/OS, which I'm not familiair with but seems similar on the surface.
