Been there, done that, got the tshirt (a nice CyanogenMod one). Then I switched to iPhone years ago, and my regret is that I should have done that WAY earlier.
I had a: Nexus S, Galaxy S3, Sony XPeria Ultra, Nexus 6, Moto S. All those were bought with custom ROM support in mind. My experience was love and hate:
- Clean minimal Android is really NICE.
- Not having (insert Facebook bloatware here) on your phone is NICE!
- Custom ROMs break often, the moment you move away from a big project like CyanogenMOD (later LineageOS), you are pretty much depending on one or two people. If those people change phones, you are sol. Hell, it happens with big projects as well.
- Some apps don't work unless you install Magisk to bypass Google's Safetynet.
- One slight mistake flashing a device and you risk in having a nice paperweight.
- Flashing/modding your phone takes a LOT of time.
- Bootloader unlock might void warranties (might not be legal) but as an individual I can't fathom to sue a megacorp.
I realized that my time was way more precious than fiddling often with a phone, so I just went over to the iOS camp, never looked back. My mom is now using my old iPhone 6S Plus with latest and greatest version of iOS.
That's probably a good option for someone who writes for Vice or you and I, but for the average user that's pretty unfeasible. I think even with this knowledge, the point of the article still stands.
Honestly, that's way too much trouble to actually be a solution. Custom ROMs should be a hobbyist thing for people who want to spend their time tinkering with their phone, not a way to support a not-very-old device.
That sounds like what someone could say about Linux:
~ Linux should be a hobbyist thing for people who want to spend their time tinkering with their computer, not a way to support a not-very-old device. ~
Whether it comes to phones or computers, I disagree respectively when it comes to custom ROMs or Linux.
> That sounds like what someone could say about Linux:
So? The problem is both Linux and a Custom ROM take a few orders of magnitude more technical skill and effort to install and maintain, which is completely unreasonable to expect from a typical non-hobbyist retail technology user. Such users should be able to click "update" on their system, get up-to-date with patches, so they can go on to do what really want to do (which probably isn't "maintain their technology"). I'm even someone who's capable of doing that, but I don't want to because I've got much better and more important things do with my time now.
Installing Linux is often far easier than installing Windows nowadays, and multiple distributions offer long-time support. It's an excellent way of getting more life out of semi-old systems.
