Ironically, a large number of privacy minded individuals are using Google Pixels flashed with custom roms (Calyx, Graphene, Lineage, etc)
If not designed specifically for privacy, these Android forks are at the very least not stock Android, and stripped of many anti-privacy features.
This can be accomplished due to the Pixel’s (mostly) unique attribute - a bootloader that can be unlocked and relocked.
I don’t know why Google have allowed their bootloaders this freedom, but I can’t imagine that a company with a reputation for killing anything they touch would allow it to continue for much longer.
If/when the day comes that the Pixel is fully locked down, what options are there for privacy enthusiasts to continue using a smartphone, an inherently unprivate device?
Does anyone know of development going into looking at how to unlock bootloaders on any device, opening the door for custom rom flashing to continue?
Are the pinephones, fairphones, etc going to have to ramp up production?
Anything going on in the iphone department allowing for detachment from the Apple ecosystem?
What happens next, really?
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No. When they changed the 4G bands and dropped the older ones, they changed them to the only 2 or 3 bands that non North American phones don’t have. I’ve never heard of anyone hacking this through software but you never know.
I think it’s hardware antenna specific.