So at the moment Apple hold the 1st place in mobile OS marketshare, I feel the unfortunate thing that will happen as marketshare drops Google will slowly move to supporting projects other than android, and eventually drop support entirely and focus on making better iOS apps, Device makers will start making their own operating systems with tighter locked down appstores in order compete with iOS, we already see this with Amazon planning to switch to a linux based OS in future fire devices.
The reason is locked bootloader’s, some carriers lock the pixels bootloader down meaning you can’t install custom roms. Some lock it until the device is paid off or during a 90 day period.
The Pixel 8 Pro is likely the best. You can flash graphine or pretty much any rom. Samsung really doesn’t have custom roms anymore. If you get a pixel buy it from the Google Store
I would say pixel 8 pro, likely the best phone you can get that will have support for 8 years plus. Flash graphineOS or lineage if you don’t care about high security and want Android auto
graphine usually gets updated for as long as Google is still releasing patches, now of course graphine is a FOSS Project so zero guarantees of any kind
I have a pixel 6 and would say its a pretty decent phone, generally I think Googles problems are more in its stock software, graphineOS seems to work great.
Did consumers actually reject touch screens in cars? Like android auto and Apple CarPlay are pretty popular in the US