Phones are glass slabs. Without unique software, there’s no reason to spend the extra money on a Samsung phone, so why would companies bother investing in a platform like that? You may be interested in projects like Fairphone who do support multiple operating systems.

Change the model. The sameness of Android phones is one the worst thing about them, and the software changes with each unique one are almost exclusively battery hogging and poorly written. If phone companies were forced to open their hardware platforms maybe we’d see more risk again. Perhaps differentiated with ACTUAL VARIETY of hardware. Phones with physical keyboards… phones with e-paper… These things are actually actively selected AGAINST in the current model because the limitations of system updates means even if you get used to a better workflow with unique hardware, there’s no guarantee that you will get ANY updates or that there will EVER be a better version of the hardware released, but if the platforms were open, the lives of these things could be extended almost indefinitely. And besides,there’s absolutely no reason developers couldn’t have special software features still installed into their phones and still give me the option to dump a vanilla android image on there. Most PC users don’t buy a PC and then wipe the OS and customize their installation, so there’s no reason to believe open platforms would change anything for end users, and forcing companies to get more creative in innovating isn’t a bad thing in this nightmare market of samey overpriced clones.

I’m not aware of any API changes that would affect a dictionary app. It’s possible the app was abandonware and got cleaned up in Google’s yearly trash cleanup (that does remove some useful apps with the heaps of abandoned trash), but in that case you should still be able to install the APK from F-Droid or another source.

It DOES fail directly installed from the APK, but I don’t want to get bogged down in this.

I don’t disagree. That’s why I’m grateful for the Fairphone, Pinephone, and its other open competitors. Consider buying one of those once your current phone no longer works right! Most customers couldn’t care less about this, so open source/less restrictive phone community can use more customers or they’ll stay niche and inaccessible!

I’ve thought about that and I might do that if Pine ever contracts a less scammy shipping partner. Regardless, this special hardware is antithetical to developing a mobile Linux ecosystem anyway. Linux thrives because it runs on ANYTHING. That gives the widest possible user base who then contribute back to the system and makes the entire ecosystem BETTER. You can buy ANY PC and just install what you want, and that’s not less profitable for PC manufacturers. Smartphone manufacturers are greedily wanting to ENFORCE that environment to be Google’s specific flavor of Android modified the way THEY want, and the fact it’s based on that very same Linux kernel, locking down and limiting and forbidding users from using that hardware in better ways, is morally appalling and disgusting. I don’t disagree that this is an option, but this is a workaround to a system that shouldn’t function this way.