I made two honest attempts to move completely away from the three Big Tech mobile monopolies (only two now, the dystopia keeps consolidating...): once with Symbian a long time ago, once with Ubuntu Touch.

Yeah, the phones do phone things. And if you squint hard enough at the Linux phone, the look and feel is almost as polished an experience as Android's.

But here's the thing: as soon as you need to make a payment with your bank's app or you need to connect to your company's Teams, you're shit out of luck and you need a backup monopoly phone. That happens very fast and it gets tiring very quickly.

So I'm still on Android. DeGoogled Android (CalyxOS) but still code from the Google dystopia ultimately, because however much I hate Google, I'm also a practical man who would like to live his life somewhat normally.

That's how entrenched the monopolies are: even when you're as dedicated as I am to avoiding them, you can't.