My Android phone doesn't work that way. The company behind it expects me to do certain tasks with the phone. Some tasks are open for gradual adoption, other aren't, meaning they are mandated. After all those years, I'm beginning to dislike that.
Similarly, the sooner we get over the trope that any handset maker must be forced into selling a tiny general purpose computing device instead of an iPod PDA communicator, the better. It is what it is, let makers just make it the best, without unnecessary and less reliable modularity. Yes people want that, it’s a market segment, and so other makers can make things for that category.
Pretty sure AOSP does not do this.
The reality of this is much different. To the average person buying a Linux phone, their new sofa has 3 legs on Tuesday, they can only invite 2 friends to sit on it if it’s an odd number day, and sometimes the fabric glows in the dark. 1% of the time it works exactly how they dreamed and 99% of the time it’s frustrating.
But they own it and can fix all those problems if they’re so inclined! Or they can be at the mercy of people who can fix those problems and hope they don’t see the random glow in the dark fabric as a feature and that they don’t prioritize the problems they’re having over the problems they’re having.
Or they can buy an iPhone or flagship Android phone and have it work exactly like they want it to 99% of the time and be frustrating 1% of the time.
The average person’s iPhone/Android is the sofa in their living room just waiting to be used.
Except, it isn't.
Because at random times the sofa company comes in and reorganises the way the cushions are positioned. And then they take away the ability to use the tilt function.
Then, because they really need to know how they use the couch, they'll start tracking when you sit and lie on the couch. So when you have your day off and its outside the scheduled expectations, when you sit on the couch they suddenly come over and put locks and chains on the couch because it clearly wasn't you who was using the couch.
Most people just accept this, because what are you going to do? Buy a couch that doesn't have tilt or cushions? You want those! You don't want a wicker chair, you want a comfy couch, so you have to deal with the couch company making life hell every so often. Because there isn't an alternative for the average person.
I field calls from my parents at least once a week about something that has "broken". The tech support is like pulling teeth, because everything is hidden from the user. They don't know what they did wrong and all that they want is for it to "work". And half the time I can't help them - because the phone doesn't belong to them and the OS or apps has decided that X feature is no longer worth supporting, and force-updated them to the latest version. Rolling back to the version that did work is difficult or impossible.