GrapheneOS is the only Android OS providing full security patches

> GrapheneOS has officially confirmed a major new hardware partnership—one that marks the end of its long-standing Pixel exclusivity. According to the team, work with a major Android OEM began in June and is now moving toward the development of a next-generation smartphone built to meet GrapheneOS’ strict privacy and security standards.

It's impossible to escape the Apple/Google duopoly but at least GrapheneOS makes the most out of Android regarding privacy.

I still wish we could get some kind of low resource, stable and mature Android clone instead of Google needlessly increasing complexity but this will over time break app compatibility (Google will make sure of it)

Edit: I do think Pixel devices used to be one of the best but still I'd like to choose my hardware and software separately interoperating via standards

I'm imagining a future where you buy a smartphone and when you do the first configuration, it asks you which services provider you want to use. Google and Apple are probably at the top of the list, but at the bottom there is "custom..." where you can specify the IP or host.domain of your own self-hosted setup.

Then, when you download an app, the app informs the app provider of this configuration and so your notifications (messenger, social media, games, banking, whatever) get delivered to that services provider and your phone gets them from there accordingly.

Is there anything like that in the world today?

At this point? Reliable emulation that can run 99% of Android apps, to provide a bridge until the platform is interesting enough for people to develop for it "natively".

I think the easiest way to do that would be to run Android in a VM.

If your answer is "don't use them", then you're not living in a country where the vast majority of communications are done on WhatsApp or Signal, good for you I guess.