My pain isn’t in the browser, it’s with other apps that are still playing catch-up.
A lot of apps have added support now, but there are still edge cases. Animated webp being one. If i send that in a messaging app, usually all the other person sees is the first frame.
It’s absolutely not the fault of the format, I agree, but still a cause of compatibility headaches.
One take is that ‘normal’ users get ‘scared’ by extensions and do strange things like break their file by renaming the extension away or think they can literally convert a file between types by changing the extension.
And so they hide it away.
But it’s bad logic because breaking things by trying to do weird stuff is how any of us who are technically literate became that way in the first place; by fucking around and finding out.
I’m sure it’s very difficult to compete with the established duopoly of Apple and Google.
How are you supposed to make a product cheap against those enormous economies of scale, all while knowing very few people will want it or buy it when it doesn’t have any apps for reasons of that same duopoly?
Linux phones absolutely are a niche project with sacrifices, as you said, and the only people who can bear the cost of entry at the moment will be a niche market of engineers and tinkerers.
It would be nice to get the price down to that of the consumer market, but the whole experience is still not even ready for consumers.
On the contrary, they have learned a lot.
They’ve learned: