On Tue, Oct 17, 2017 at 12:22 AM, Henry Baker
Biggest problem IMHO is Android. There doesn't appear to be any way -- short of a class-action lawsuit -- to force the Android phone vendors to supply a firmware upgrade. They're already 12-24 months behind on CVE's. And I doubt that Google is willing to upgrade every Android phone on its own.
Google only upgrades its own phones. Other makers only upgrade their own. The problem is the phone and closed hardware manufacturers, not particularly Google Android, other than not forcing them, and themselves, to open up more. Mail, call, and write them, tell them you want #OpenHW or you're not buying their latest crap.
Cyanogen is out of the Android OS business; LineageOS
Yes, regardless of manufacturer, provided you have an unlocked or rootable bootloader, you can backup and update Android to the latest available official Google Android version, and in the process wipe out all the bloatware other makers included. Advised to check binary blobs / closed hardware beforehand especially if upgrading major versions. Lineage is the simple way to do similar. https://developer.android.com/ https://lineageos.org/ https://www.xda-developers.com/ https://postmarketos.org/ https://osmocom.org/projects/baseband https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_custom_Android_distributions