This thesis evaluates the feasibility of a software-open smartphone
on commercial hardware without sacrificing everyday usability. It first
examines the limitations of openness in the modern mobile ecosystem and then
defines a model for separately assessing the openness of individual system
layers and practical usability. The model distinguishes between criteria,
indicators and synthetic scores, and is applied in the analysis of existing
open-source-oriented mobile solutions and in an empirical case study on the
OnePlus~6T. The results show that a fully open-source phone in the strict
sense is not realistically achievable on ordinary commercial mobile hardware
today, mainly because of closed lower system layers, firmware and vendor
components. Nevertheless, open-source-oriented solutions can offer a
technically skilled user more control, longer device usability and reduced
dependence on the manufacturer.
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