Some of us like to tinker. We really get satisfaction of having a weird niche filled and even if it comes at the cost of stability and other issues. Heck my Custom Roms used to be more up to date with security updates than phones that were older than one year.

I could use kernels that undervolts my processor to give me better battery life. It allowed features that even 5 years ago were on the custom ROM scene still very absent from modern phones.

But the most important part for me was learning, discovering. If I tried a new ROM I would spend hours going through certain roms settings. If there is a glitch, learn how to diagnose and try to fix it, or learn to send a logcat to the developer.

It was like a fun hobby. I learned how to fix some of my old phones, like screen replacement, and learned how to cure uv reactive glue. So many other things and I was just a noob.

But it gave freedom. I understand iPhone and the other high brands are easy to use, have gimmicky features and all, but dammit I have freedom to have my weird niche phone, with multiple breaking features and I loved it because it just worked.

If Google truly did hold security as its main concern, it would have opened the play Store, yet we know now they only wish to protect their monopoly