Didn't these numbers used to be much, much higher in the past?
NB: Since I'm on GrapheneOS now I haven't looked back
This is partly done, I think, to prevent users from uninstalling bloatware (Chinese brands doing this mostly), since I've had to deal with this on a BBK branded phone, locked down so far even ADB can't touch the bloat.
Google is also a part of this with play integrity and apps being blocked from working, so if you depend on Google or if you want to use that phone in your day-to-day life with apps from work or banking apps, it might not work great on the same phone.
In my opinion I think it is mostly the manufacturers fighting this, Google is solvable but a locked bootloader isn't.
- If you want a non-bloated, mostly-AOSP ROM with updates for many years, installing LineageOS (or another third-party ROM) used to be the only option; whereas these days, the Pixel phones give you most of this, and you can just buy these in a store instead of needing to manually flash a ROM.
- The stock ROMs from most manufacturers are less horrible than they used to be. I'm not saying that they're great now, but there's a pretty huge difference between most new phones today and a KitKat-era cheap Samsung phone.
- As you said, I suspect that GrapheneOS has supplanted LineageOS for many of the enthusiast users.
..a boring ¡spyware! device that tracks and listens to you!
Also you forgot to mention that you're sharing your personal and device details to our 1,893 e21 partners!
Really though, I'm just waiting for that AI agent that will help me shop online on my phone.. That's my vision of a perfect future!! /s
(how is this boring?:))
This right here is why I no longer consider custom ROMs. My phone is a tool critical to my daily life and I need it to function correctly nearly 100% of the time. Custom ROMs never really reach that bar in my experience.
Also, the various forms of attestation allow corporations the power to punish me for having the temerity to modify my own property. Yet another way the tech industry has metastasized into a societal cancer.
Not to suggest GrapheneOS has become the new "standard" given it currently only supports Pixels, but I hear a lot more about GrapheneOS as the custom Android build than LineageOS, so I wonder if a lot of people have moved there from LineageOS.
The other reason for a decline in custom ROMs may just be that apps are becoming more and more locked down. Banking apps are getting stricter all the time, so even the ones that work with custom ROMs today aren't guaranteed to work tomorrow. And more people probably use Google Wallet than ever, which also rules out custom ROMs AFAIK.
The real problem for me were the hard to come by blobs that needed flashing after certain updates. And the fact no official supported LineageOS build as available. That last one is mostly on my part for not checking before buying. But still, in the past pretty much any popular phone had one or more official builds supported on XDA. Nowadays you need to venture into Telegram groups scrolling over endless linear conversations of people asking the same issue over and over again. Maybe I'm just getting old, but what was wrong with using a (well structured) forum?
For me, I'm not that concerned with having contactless payments work. Although I did switch banks just to not have the Google Services/wallet requirement. That was short lived though, pretty much every contactless payment now only works with Google Wallet (ridiculous), I just gave up on it and pay by card instead.
I just want to get away from the fact Google Services is integrated into everything you do on your phone. The fact Google Wallet has access to not only the payments you make using NFC, but also the last x transactions on you bank account 'for fraud detection purposes' is quite insane if you ask me.
That's why I just run plain without Google Services (not even the sandboxed one by GrapheneOS) and accept the fact certain conveniences just isn't available for me.
I don't even miss rooting, which I mostly did in the past to have (non VPN based) add blocking on OS level. I just replaced most apps by their browser-based alterantives and use an add blocker there.
[1]https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/12281-how-many-grapheneos-u...
The actual numbers are frankly even more disappointing - these numbers are heavily pushed up up by waydroid, which is an emulator for Android apps on Desktop Computing. More than half of the US installs is running Waydroid, with the actual most used real device in the US being nx_tab... which is LineageOS for the Nintendo Switch. That's a difference of 180k and 12k btw. The most used actual phone in the US for LineageOS is beyondx, which is the codename for the Galaxy S10 5g, a device that at a glance stopped being sold last year.
China by contrast fares much better when it comes to LineageOS (as Google Play Services isn't allowed in the country by export controls, the control from Google isn't nearly as strong there); the most used device there is actually a phone, the Xiaomi Mi 8 (dipper) and right behind it, the Xiaomi Mi 10T(/Pro) codenamed apollon.
Final country worth mentioning is Brazil, which apparently really likes the moto g7 power (ocean), a phone from roughly the same period as the Galaxy S10 5g.
Vietnam is also relatively high, with the Galaxy S7 (herolte) being the most used device. Russia is just a case where it's basically all waydroid users - not real phones.
At least from my understanding of the world, most of these numbers make sense if you consider them in proximity to US power, financial capabilities making phones last longer than their official support dates and just a rough idea of what phone brands are popular in which country.
Even Samsung is fine with a quick debloating session you can do through WebUSB these days. The only phones I'd really need a custom ROM on these days are those certain Chinese brands that stuff their phone with absolute garbage. Compared to the days where a custom ROM would be faster and updates would end after half a year, if they happened at all, I barely have a reason to use a custom ROM these days.
China developed Harmony OS in response to American banning some of their brands from using Google Play.
https://www.huaweicentral.com/huawei-harmonyos-once-again-ov...
But at some point, I had a few apps that stopped working with unofficial ROMs, or with rooted phones. For a while, I played with magisk root hiding, but the play integrity api kept changing, it was just a hassle. Not worth it.
So now I have two phones. One with lineage, and my daily driver with a factory ROM.