> as the manufacturer can always use it as a general purpose computer for its own nefarious means This is assuming the device is, in fact, a general purpose co

> as the manufacturer can always use it as a general purpose computer for its own nefarious means This is assuming the device is, in fact, a general purpose computer. This is true now basically all of the time, but it doesn't have to be. I can imagine as a thought experiment an ASIC or FPGA based phone that implements a very high level application processor, while what we normally call firmware, OS and libraries are implemented in "pure hardware". (I agree with your sentiment, but somewhat disagree with your apparent conclusion android phones are any better if you're worried about bad actors -- the baseband and DSP from Qualcomm are processors running code we can never touch underlying the entire hardware. Similarly, almost all other computer hardware have separate CPUs inside the main CPU where the mfc. runs their own secret code which cannot be tampered with or even directly seen sometimes)