Agree with every word of this. It's the open-ness that's kept me on Android all these years. I'm less of a phone-tinkerer than I was a decade ago, but I still use dozens of those side-project, non-commercial F-Droid / side-load apps all the time.
If (looks like when) I lose those, I'll be (sigh) buying an iPhone. There isn't any other point to Android, for me.
Yeah, this is exactly how I feel. I recently bought a new phone, and considered an iPhone for the first time. The sole reason I am still using Android is that so many of my favorite apps are only on F-droid. In my experience, open source software is far higher quality than the proprietary counterparts, but many of them are exclusively on F-droid.
If (looks like when) I lose those, I'll be (sigh) buying an iPhone. There isn't any other point to Android, for me.