The tech they reference is quite real. The setup is somewhat unique but I see it as one of the superpowers of a Linux mobile device - one can do whatever one wants without a big corp dictating the rules or locking down the experience.
Examples:
“I believe that a phone should offer very reliably just these features:
Calls SMS E2E encrypted foss IM Deep sleep and push notifications (or any alternative for notifications without draining the battery”
Very few people outside of HN would agree with this. A phone is currently the primary computing device for the vast majority of people.
And for radio: “Just add some streaming addresses to a simple script.”
Podcasts: “ I listen to podcasts. Sometimes. With a modified version of the sxmo_rss.sh script.”
A staggeringly small population want to handle their radio and podcast listening by just editing a small script.
Even a lot of the HN crowd want an easier life than script editing to solve these sorts of needs.
Right now almost no one has the option to build what works for them. The phone is incredibly burdensome environment with tons of top down control that constantly bounds what we might do, and requires its own special libraries & tools to get started on.
The story here is humble & simple. But it's doing for oneself, using sensible straightforward & common computing options adapted from the rest of the computing world. It's a tale of what Barefoot Developers could be doing on mobile, about one of many worlds that could be springing up, if we weren't encumbered with such stodgy narrow controlling limited platforms. https://maggieappleton.com/home-cooked-software
I ran CyanogenMod for years, and every app I ran and every feature I used on the stock Android OS worked properly on CM. I loved it. But these days that's just not the case on Lineage or Graphene or Calyx or any of the others.
So I think for many people, it doesn't matter. "Google Android", "Samsung Android", etc. are the only realistic options, so they are just "Android" to them.
"Pushing back" doesn't really work when there's no support, and adding that support is against Google's priorities.
Regardless web experience on mobile is unfortunately generally subpar than native apps, for most sites/apps. I'm not sure I'm equipped to change that situation.