That you can potentially read the code for the entire software stack doesn't mean you can trivially iterate on it. For example, suppose the latency culprit wer

That you can potentially read the code for the entire software stack doesn't mean you can trivially iterate on it. For example, suppose the latency culprit were Firefox's CPU-based repainting. (I don't think it is as I can scroll just fine on my Chromebook with FF.) Changing Firefox to fill the scrolled area using the old Iphone checkerboard-style as someone mentioned above is non-trivial. There's nothing Gnome devs can do to make that happen, short of stopping work on Gnome, becoming FF devs, and submitting a large patch to FF. On the other hand, having access to the entire software stack plus specs (and firmware?) for the entire phone definitely gives them a higher probability of cutting into that touch latency.