This is not true. I’ve helped lots of people install Linux on their old laptops, they used them until the hardware stopped working and I rarely if ever got any questions or requests for help.

Because it just worked.

It’s great that smart people are working on this, but I don’t think we can expect hobbyists to make a useful OSS implementation of smartphones. Especially since there is so much dependence on the hardware. We either need a company that can throw some weight behind it, or just straight up governments that value it (e.g. from a sovereignty point of view).