The ban happened because Verizon was trying to sell it.

The article does mention this problem and they claim to have been able to pull it off somehow.

“Mammalian cells are orders of magnitude more sensitive than algae cells, but even with those cells, we were able to detach them with no impact to the viability of the cell,” Vandereydt says.

Not certain Sony counts as worldwide anymore since they seem to have retreated from the US.

I’m sure what I’m about to say has already been echoed by others, but there are a few factors working against them. This is from a US/Canada perspective. Other countries may have more or fewer barriers.

1. Mobile hardware - Mobile hardware has higher security. Some of this is by design for the user, since mobile devices are more likely to fall into wrong hands than e.g. a desktop. Some of it is corps preventing users from using their hardware in ways they don’t want you to, though. The level of locked down mobile hardware has only increased over time.
2. Carriers - This one is particular to North America, I think. Carriers here have a long history of meddling in phone hardware - from bloatware to SIM locks and everything in between. One of the things they do since LTE is require device makers to pay them to get certified to make calls on their network. Linux capable devices are too niche to be able to afford this. This is why Fairphone, for example, even with its Android-based OS, only works on one carrier here.

Those are the main two barriers here. Things like apps can have workarounds for those that would be interested in early adoption of Linux phones. But there’s no way around the combination of carrier certification costs and limited options of only very locked down hardware.

I think there’s some sort of a west coast trend towards immutable distros. Bazzite has the same kind of buzz. Haven’t really met anyone that uses these distros around me, though.

Presumably if there isn’t a user report for whatever distro I’m using

Distro is unlikely to matter, as long as you don’t pick a really obscure one. And even then, flatpaks will probably work fine.

Protondb also looks to be focused on Steam, I’m guessing it’s like MacOS where if it’s a game not on Steam then you’re shit out of luck if there isn’t a Linux specific version?

Steam is the easiest to work with and most well-supported. But there are other managers like Heroic Launcher and Lutris that can cover non-steam. Knowing whether a game can run on proton/wine outside of Steam does likely require a google search, though. Most things can be made to work as long as the game doesn’t require kernel-level anticheat (e.g. Destiny and BF6).

Of course they have. We even have the Librem 5 that’s sold here. The big problem the linux phones face is the cost of getting certified by all three carriers here — and without carrier cert, they just don’t work.