dipak

Simple Mobile Tools the company behind Simple Apps has been bought by ZipoApps. The repo is no longer maintained by original developers, and it is speculated that ZipoApps would soon introduce advertisements in the Simple Apps.

A fork of SimpleApps is continued as Fossify Apps.

By "general purpose OS" I meant "an OS or OSes which are capable to provide features so that the phone can reasonably used as a daily driver". Similar to bare-bone AOSP. I didn't stress on a single OS. Sorry, that was not clarified in my response.

Regarding the other parts, the issue is not about the jailbreak or unlock of bootloader - it is already being done. And it is getting increasingly easy for those phones which stop getting updates. I was stressing the fact that even after such unlock, the harder part is to avail/install a workable OS on such a phone, and even harder is to develop such. A lot of reverse engineering needed in such efforts.

Yeah, if we can get the device unlocked, get the full hardware specifications with datasheets and firmware code, and source code of the drivers then we might have a shot.

Sorry, I was not on the same ideological page as you on Anti-Corporate Movement. I'm new here, and wasn't fully aware of the goal of community. So, my reply was along the lines of technical issues of the approach.

I think one should also take into factor that not only software(at OS level), but the hardware(including GSM base-band) is being continuously deprecated in favor of newer and faster(?) hardware. Eg. 5G is pushed aggressively at the cost of lower speeds of 4G and broken connectivity of 3G.

Despite this, if someone is ready to work with a deliberately throttled network, then there is full ecosystem of apps and services which continuously target newer OS versions, in order to get access to better, faster, more secure libraries and OS APIs. If the case is not about smartphones, then the dumb phones don't need any OS upgrade to continue working. A caution here is - those phones would not be secure to vulnerabilities found afterwards.

Similar situation prevails in Computers as well(stopping OS upgrades and associated browsers/apps stops working after some years on that OS) but the lifespan of a computer is longer than that of a phone.

Regarding custom OS -- getting the latest version of Android work on older phone hardware is already tedious task. It requires rewriting the malfunctioning drivers to be compatible with the new OS APIs. The hardware vendors add to the misery and don't release workable documentations on how to approach writing drivers for a different OS. Now, multiply this effort for all sorts of different hardware made by different vendors! I believe a general purpose phone OS which would support such a large variety of phone hardware would be a humongous task.

E: After reading the petition -- I think for the sake of not wasting a decently working hardware we can have some sort of jailbreak. But without a proper working replacement OS after the jailbreak, the situation would not change much. And, if one can provide such reliable OS, it is a potential company idea right there!

+1 for recommending Fossify over 'SimpleApps'

Extending the reply for 'Sandboxed Play Store .. F-Droid .. Aurora Store' -

1. In case of Sandboxed Play Store - we'd need to login via a Google account in order to be able to download apps. Also, when we allow network access to the Play Store, it may send device info, app downloaded, updated etc related telemetry to Google. Also expect the promoted apps/games ads in the Play Store home screen.
2. In case of Aurora Store - we can use it via Anonymous User or we can supply our own Google Account. Aurora Store just uses the credentials to download apps from Google Play, but other telemetry is limited compared to Play Store.
3. In case of F-Droid store - It mostly hosts open-source Apps. And has cautions whenever an app uses proprieray libraries, code or needs access to specific network(eg - Telegram FOSS needs Telegram Servers access to function) in order to work.

I'd recommend you have both - F-Droid and Aurora Store. If you need to access the Play Store subscriptions, then you'd need to install Play Store as well.