The usual objection is that it is super difficult to develop a phone that replaces your iPhone or Samsung device. I personally absolutely wouldn't mind maintaining two or three phones depending on use cases like bank and ID stuff (phone stays home) and a limited features phone for messaging, maps, Uber, telephone.
The project is to define and what blobs are still nonfree for current "free-ish" mobile phone OS's and work on freeing those. So not "a mobile OS from the ground up."
LibrePhone will focus on creating a fully open mobile platform from the ground up.
Hardware --- why this PC/software minded approach just won't work with phones.
Phone hardware is all unique and proprietary and cheap (relatively speaking) --- due to manufacturing expertise and economies of scale. And the manufacturers like it this way.
Without this production/scale advantage, any "open" phone will cost 3-4x more for comparable performance. In other words --- it is destined to be a very niche market product.
The only hope for a mass market is to find a volume manufacturer willing to play along. Good luck with that.
