I'm well aware that this isn't nearly as much of an issue for Apple devices - that's why I very clearly specified Android in my previous comment.
Yes AOSP is open source but that doesn't help as much as one might hope for the reasons I outlined in my previous comment. Basically most end user devices aren't actually running AOSP at the end of the day, and can't without investing a nontrivial amount of effort. (And that still wouldn't prevent vulnerabilities related to out of date firmware.)
The comment of yours that I originally responded to seemed to me to insinuate that having access to fully open sourced phones wouldn't be able to do anything to improve device security as a foregone conclusion. I was objecting to that, pointing out that there are a number of real world examples where access to a fully open source mobile stack would immediately and drastically improve the current situation. In a hypothetical world full of such stacks perhaps this article would never have been written.
Yes AOSP is open source but that doesn't help as much as one might hope for the reasons I outlined in my previous comment. Basically most end user devices aren't actually running AOSP at the end of the day, and can't without investing a nontrivial amount of effort. (And that still wouldn't prevent vulnerabilities related to out of date firmware.)
The comment of yours that I originally responded to seemed to me to insinuate that having access to fully open sourced phones wouldn't be able to do anything to improve device security as a foregone conclusion. I was objecting to that, pointing out that there are a number of real world examples where access to a fully open source mobile stack would immediately and drastically improve the current situation. In a hypothetical world full of such stacks perhaps this article would never have been written.