I have an old laptop I use as a server, it sits on top of a cabinet in the corner of my room. One day I noticed it seemed like the space key was being held down all the time, but only past the login screen. I was about to buy a new laptop because I thought the keyboard was totally broken (and its kind of old anyway). Turns out an old Bluetooth keyboard in my closet that was paired to my laptop got switched on at some point and the space bar was being pressed.

I’m not sure what the exact reason is. I would guess the people within Google running the Pixel program still have the freedom to make the phones like that. I don’t think it will last forever, especially if people start adopting degoogled phone operating systems at scale.

It seems like the last breaths of the “do no evil” mantra. Your other options are like Fairphone or the yet to be released Hiroh phone with /e/os which is another flavor of degoogled android.

At the moment Pixel phones are the easiest for people in the US market to degoogle