> Rooted phone and prone to boot loops and hard resets
> using the hardware in a slightly different way
Honestly I wouldn’t classify turning a daily driver device into a semi-brick (if it boot loops and has to be hard reset regularly…) as “slightly different”. If you want to experiment that’s fine, but why would you subject your daily driver to that? Or, why not just have a phone for stable use / real world stuff, and a phone for everything else?
To put it bluntly: you’re wildly out of touch with reality for most people. 99% of people who have a phone — even those people who install custom ROMs on their daily driver — either plan around having to deal with this stuff or have an escape hatch. Most people refuse to tolerate such an experience.
My previous phone was a Xiaomi. Part of the reason they're cheaper than competitors with similar hardware is because that thing is filled to the brim with useless ads, extra tracking way beyond just crash analytics for the manufacturer and the regular google stuff and even some useless "phone booster" app embedded in the settings.
After waiting the two weeks so Xiaomi would allow me to unlock the bootloader (which is bullshit, by the way), i installed LineageOS.
The problem is that the regular updates with security patches sometimes would cause a boot loop. Some times is something as simple as a system file becoming read only, sometimes no thread on XDA developers could guide me to the right solution, and then i just do a factory reset and start over.
But aside from flashing lineage and an ad blocker, my usage is the same as anyone else: answer calls, use messaging apps, browse the web, play games and edit some documents when i'm far away from my PC.
My current phone is a motorola, though, and while i think the official ROM is pretty disappointing (too many pop ups nagging me to sign up to motorola or check motorola apps), as long as i can flash magisk and an ad blocker, i'm a happy person.
> To put it bluntly: you’re wildly out of touch with reality for most people. 99% of people who have a phone
I don't think 99% of people who have a phone have any kind of extensively worked out plan for what happens if their phone is lost, stolen, or breaks. If we're lucky the number is more like 50%. For most intents and purposes, irrevocably losing access to a phone is equivalent to bricking it in the way OP talks about. Any passkey-esque system needs to have a fallback plan when the phone unexpectedly becomes unavailable.
> using the hardware in a slightly different way
Honestly I wouldn’t classify turning a daily driver device into a semi-brick (if it boot loops and has to be hard reset regularly…) as “slightly different”. If you want to experiment that’s fine, but why would you subject your daily driver to that? Or, why not just have a phone for stable use / real world stuff, and a phone for everything else?
To put it bluntly: you’re wildly out of touch with reality for most people. 99% of people who have a phone — even those people who install custom ROMs on their daily driver — either plan around having to deal with this stuff or have an escape hatch. Most people refuse to tolerate such an experience.