What happened to the original vision for /e/ on phones in stores?

/e/OS Foundation & Community /e/OS experience
10

Hi, this is my humble opinion about what /e/ should allocate its LIMITED resources to.
I think it’s unrealistic and a waste to support dozens of devices. Here’s why:

  1. eOS wants to be an alternative to Google’s Android and iOS that is available to the largest number of people. i.e. eOS is targeted at ordinary users, not only geeks.

  2. Ordinary people will NEVER install an OS on a device, no matter how good the tutorials are.
    (And it is very unlikely many of these people will take the chance of sending their devices by the post to the e.foundation to get their eOS installed.)
    Ordinary people buy a device where the OS is pre-installed and they never change it.

  3. So /e/ need to sell pre-installed devices
    /e/ has started doing it with refurbish phones. :+1:
    I am aware of the Google’s “anti-fragmentation agreement” that makes it difficult (but not impossible) to find a manufacturer to produce brand-new phones (Amazon found one for their Kindle).
    Could /e/ buy large quantities of brand-new Android phones from manufacturers (at a discount price), replace their Google’s Android OS, by eOS and sell them to the public ?

In any case eOS should be supported only for those devices that /e/ is able to sell pre-installed.
Let’s say /e/ will sell one low-end device, one mid-range device and one high-end device. And support them for 5 years. Each year 3 new devices will be introduced. So at any one time there will be only 3x5 devices to support (plus a few special ones like the Fairphones, Pinephone, etc.). In the end /e/ needs to support less than 20 devices (and not 90+ !)

That would be more reasonable and will allow the dev to focus on quality rather than quantity.

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