Bah, a bad copy that pretends to impersonate a product, in order to sell personal data.

Don’t wait for it, usage data is valuable to them.

They could also perform some additional iterations with other models on the result to verify it, or even to enrich it; but we come back to the issue of costs.

You gave an example where it is possible to install linux and only basic functionality is required, but what do you think happens with almost all mobile devices?

When it is not possible to change OS/ROM, or they are old, there is no alternative… apart from being stuck with an obsolete OS and apps full of known bugs. Or are you “competent” enough to develop everything yourself?