Removing ports saves money and dongles wear out ports, it’s twice as effective for fleecing customers.

Pixel went down the same path as OnePlus. Now there’s the Nothing phone which is another gimmick made by someone who was involved with OnePlus.

Before both of then there was the Nexus and it was perfect: vanilla Android and hardware out sourced to a different manufacturer each time. Okay maybe not perfect but as close as you could get to a cheap flagship.

They tried to revive the Nexus type phones with the Xiaomi A2 I believe (Android One?) but that died out too.

I tried finding alternatives and came across Sony, they have insane specs but the software is barely updated and the bootloader is locked. It’s like no one is even trying.