Android’s open-to-all codebase and close-to-nothing licensing cost has produced many low-cost computer-grade phones for the low end market. But it does not mean cheaper total cost of ownership.

What it means, is that phone makers and carriers can be at liberty to jump into making their own mobile operating system, apps/proprietary customer lock-in scheme quickly, though not as easily, to create a confined mobile environment. All this at the cost of the consumer’s privacy and delight, under the illusion of ‘open’ and ‘cheap’.

A basic state of most ‘open’ android smartphones are more closed than many people can imagine, and most of the free apps are crappy and the paid ones are expensive. Most, if not all, of the great free apps — to some extent even paid ones — are designed to mine your data, so they can sell it to god-knows-who.

You are jailed.

I’m cool with trusting my pocket to Apple, cause that giant, publicly-listed dictatorship in Cupertino happens to have $70 billion in the bank. They are a design studio and a marketing powerhouse that knows how to create, and sell awesome products. I paid full price for their larger-than-life iPhones, enough to make my business relationship with them simple and clear: they take my money, and they protect me from the likes of Android hackers who can stalk people around on a device they always carry everywhere.

Google is an advertising company who creates ‘free’ and ‘open’ software, whose primary target is to be the biggest in whatever they do, because in advertising the larger the audience, the more money they make.

There’s no such thing as free lunch.