Is Android going in the right direction?

Not really, IMO. As a user of Android since v1.5 Cupcake, it’s disappointing to see how locked down Android has become over the years. I still recall how I took a leap of faith when I ditched the then highly customisable and feature-full Windows Mobile, to the barebones Android - I believed in the opensource nature of Android, thinking how exciting it was to be on what could be a developer’s and power user’s dream mobile platform. Although the Android dev scene at the time was nascent, I could forsee an explosion of root utilities, mods and custom ROMs. And I was right - the early Android dev scene was so exciting. From cool and useful utility such as DriveDroid or Chainfire’s CF.Lumen, to innovative custom ROMs such as Paranoid Android with their per-app DPI, Halo, Pie controls etc, the early Android scene was full of activity and really exciting as a power user.

But even as Android got more and more locked down and killed my favorite apps, mods and ROMs, I still enjoyed following many of it’s developments such as the projects Butter, Svelte, Volta, Treble and Mainline. However, I can’t recall anything major or exciting in recent years.

As someone else here mentioned, nowadays all the good stuff seems to be Pixel exclusives (like motion deblur, 7 years or software updates etc). Plus, Google keep pushing more and more stuff towards their proprietary Play Services stack, encouraging developers dependency on them - including anti-freedom features such as Play Integrity (SafetyNet). All of this makes it increasingly harder to break free from Google’s grasps, and as former fanboy of a company which once claimed to “not be evil”, it makes me sad that the ecosystem I once looked fondly towards, is now something that I’m looking to move away from.