Comment by JohnFen

I'm totally with you here.

Last year, I realized that the direction that smartphones have taken is not a direction that is good and useful for me, so I decided that I'd better design and build my own smartphone before I need to replace the one I have. I have it breadboarded up and fundamentally working. It should be completed this year.

One of my very first decisions was that the phone was going to run ordinary Linux, for all of the reasons you cite. I'm VERY excited about being able to ditch Android!