I&#x27;m not sure that this article is that contentious.  Modern smartphones are unabashedly consumer devices made for the mass market and several of the criticisms in this article are features that most people don&#x27;t want&#x2F;need.<p>What most people want&#x2F;need from a smartphone is a device that lets them do things (e.g. send messages, keep up with friends, make phonecalls, browse the Internet) without getting in their way.  They&#x27;re not really in the market for a general purpose computing device like a PC.<p>If you want that kind of device in a smartphone there are less mainstream options, but I don&#x27;t regard it as surprising that larger companies don&#x27;t actively cater to them (it&#x27;s a niche market place)<p>Personally I&#x27;ve got a range of computing devices that I use for different tasks.  When I want to read a book, or surf the Internet I use my iPad.  When I want to write some code or do my technical job, I use Linux.<p>Now there&#x27;s the obvious argument that people should have the freedom to control all their computing devices, but that freedom comes at a cost, which is that freer devices are, I would suggest, harder to maintain.(i.e. you need to understand more about the operation of the device in order to manage it).  If you&#x27;re a technical person, you may not see this as a problem, but remember mass-market consumers aren&#x27;t necessarily very technical...