Universal Android Debloater

Rooting, on the other hand, does trip safetynet unless you take extra steps to hide it.

An alternative solution is to use another device with the stock ROM (e.g. an older/used/slightly-cracked phone) for banking purposes. Then it can be locked down to reduce the attack surface (e.g. uninstall non-banking apps, stored in a secure place, bluetooth disabled, remove SIM, turned off when not in use, etc.)

An older device may not have the latest OS security updates, but it'll still be reasonably secure if you reduce the attack surface. Most of the exploitable security issues will be updated via the Play Store, and due to the Android's heterogeneity and security protections, OS/driver vulnerabilities are difficult to exploit.

AFAIK it's not the law. The law only says the banks should adopt adequate safety measures, and they do safety net as it's easy and customers don't care, as there is usually a backup plan of just using the website (apart from a few novelty banks like N26).

Here's something else I said:

> most of the devices on that list are either old or not devices people actually want to use.

Since LG doesn't make phones anymore, all of their phones on the LineageOS list qualify as "old". This is what I was getting at; it doesn't matter much that they used to make some phones with unlockable bootloaders because they will soon be obsolete and the market share percentage will creep further and further down until it joins the "others".

In my original top-level comment, I said "most" Android phones don't allow you to install a custom OS, which I still think is true, at least when talking about phones currently sold in the US. Google is a notable exception because they have a consistent track record of not impeding the user from installing a custom OS in any way. Every phone they've released has been easily unlockable, and their policy has always been that this doesn't void your warranty. OnePlus is another US brand that operates this way.

I was mostly just commenting on the sad state of industry that most vendors, if they don't completely disallow unlocking, at least put up various roadblocks to prevent most users from doing so. However, there are indeed good, non-Google options. GrapheneOS and CalyxOS currently only support Pixel phones due to their consistently unlockable bootloaders and security features, but hopefully they expand support to other phones. See the requirements for CalyxOS and GrapheneOS device support: https://calyxos.org/docs/guide/device-support#requirements-f... and https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices. LineageOS is not quite as secure but should still be perfectly adequate.

Giving money to Google might actually make it harder to de-Google your phone in the future, since they'll be throwing that money into developing """features""" like hardware-backed SafetyNet attestation.

You're right that from a different perspective (repair), Google phones actually offer you less control over your device than some of the competition. I don't think they've released a single phone with a replaceable battery, yet every phone Apple releases has one (though iOS will annoyingly warn you if you replace it yourself).