Earlier quoted context omitted.
While popularity of phones plays some part, mostly this is down to the manufacturers. HTC are well-known for providing locked-down devices; even if you're looking for a near-stock experience, HTC tends not to be recommended. Samsung is similar in this regard, though they get away with it somewhat more than HTC due to demand. In short, don't complain to/about Lineage. Vote with your pocket and buy more open phones.
>In short, don't complain to/about Lineage. Vote with your pocket and buy more open phones. I agree with this wholly. Devices like iphones or the samsung devices are riddled with user-hostile features like KNOX, locked bootloaders, pre-installed payment gardens and proprietary blobs all over along with carrier locked, contractually defined handset ownership agreements. The state of open smartphones is rather nacient,…
While some will be happy with one of these three options, some will find it a step too far from mainstream, low maintenance high end options.
With this in mind, it's important to make recommendations across the spectrum, to encourage those not willing to go "all the way" to still go some of the way.
In this area, I'd look at Fairphone (not great on the high end cutting edge tech side for obvious reasons, but decent on openness), Motorola and One+ (both more mainstream high-end options but also not quite as heavy on user-hostility as some competitors).
Google are also quite good in this area, on the hardware side, but given their ownership of the software side and general practices in that area, I'd be in less of a hurry to recommend them.