or installing any OS you want without voiding the warranty? I mean when you buy a computer, no one cares if you install Windows or Linux. So why do smartphone manufacturers care?
Every single laptop and any prebuilt computer I find in the market comes pre installed with a Windows.
A good friend approached me to install a Linux on a brand new machine and just to make sure we called the customer support line, informing there was interest to return the windows license, as the software would not be used.
The reply we got was that by removing the software the warranty of the equipment would be null and void. The option was to ship the computer to their maintenance provider and have it removed, with costs presented at end for labour.
In the EU at least that would be illegal - you can't void an entire warranty, only relevant bits.. and since windows doesn't have a warranty anyway..
The canonical example is you can't void the warranty on a car engine because you changed the stereo. 'Doing x will void the warranty' is almost never the full story.
Because this isn’t good for the consumer only short sighted leftists who love others taking control for them are cool with the government telling companies how they can make their products
Instead of posting a rant about "short sighted leftists," why don't you explain precisely why it would be so horrible if users were able to install whatever operating system they wanted to install on the devices they've purchased with their own money?
You say that like Apple would have to put in a ton of work for that. Android can already run on iPhones. It's just an ARM computer. Project Sandcastle already exists. All they have to do is allow unlocking the bootloader just like they do on macs.
Ability for OS makers to freely port their systems would be super cool.
Replacable batteries with this and imagine how used phone market would shine up.
My parents won't spend more than 150$ on a phone. I don't want to buy them cheap Android phones that are always loaded with spyware and installs dozens of bloat on first boot. I want to buy used 5 year's old phone with much high build quality, then slap new lightweight OS and new battery in it.