I know that most customizability features that were once exclusive to custom roms are available for use right out of the box these days.
In the case of manufacturers like Samsung, I think,there are still no official builds of lineageOS for the newer phones after the galaxy s10 series.
I’m aware that GSI roms are available. My experience with GSI’s have been kinda bad. Most of the time they lack a lot of features which makes the phone not viable anymore. Then there are also the random UI bugs, which frustrate the hell out of the user.
I miss the old days when there were lots of custom roms, even for budget devices. I used to flash them when my phones were out of warranty. I could use my phone however I saw fit.
Is there no way to bring back these good times ? Or will the whole custom ROM community just shrink to the pixels and a select few devices ?
Sure but the fact that anyone there could do it means fundamentally there is a risk present and that’s a bad position for a privacy centered organization. The others there MAY not do it, but they COULD.
Isn’t that the case with any project, open source or proprietary? Plenty of previously-respectable manufacturers have decided to just dump in a load of bloat/ad/spyware one release, at least with an open project there are security audits and the like so you know if something’s gone awry.