Found this the other day.
https://www.ikkoaudio.com/en-eu/products/mind-one-phone
Basically half a smart phone, pretty cool…

For sure that’s true.
I mean not many sideload in general but if the need was there (like its coming) to be able to install what we want. Scripts and tools would improve.
Not sure if possible but a pwa to run pre-packaged install scripts would be pretty cool. Thinks like Tasker can do it already and tmux helpers… But it’s not quite click and run yet.
But would imitate a lot how Self-hosting works at home.

Its essentially a sandboxed webpage, if Google is going to block access to the internet then we got bigger issues…
BTW you can run arbitrary programs on android, eg check termux and all the packages there. That’s not sideloading as it’s not even an “app”. You could run things there and then connect via a browser to local host and port for Ui purposes.
I mean it should be common place now just to get a new battery put in. My city pays for half the repairs upto 200 euro now, to not need to throw out devices.
Plus everybody uses a case now days anyway, so you don’t even see the chasis gaps if the repair was a little less than perfect.