Thank you. That was exactly my point - they camped in a niche they had no intent to do properly.
Worse yet, they screamed at users to lean on the community (read: unpaid FLOSS as support). They refused to provide even baseband images to do the things they were selling, like Pinephone Pro as as, you know, a phone.
At one point, I thought they were just an upstart trying to get off the ground. But in reality, its a complete grift that ends up taking community resources and nothing to show for it.
I have their pinenote - as far as I can tell, the community has done a great job on the Linux image, but I ended up sticking with the android fw as I can't be bothered to reflash the Linux partition now in case I brick it.
I think it can be done this way, with the manufacturer taking care of hardware and the community taking care of software - but they should at least fund one or two people and some projects directly to make it work.
the pinenote is a great little ereader with the android fw.
Yes, we should be happy to have less options.../s