Re: AO-- "myPhones" ?
"(you'll never have full ownership and control of an iPhone--at any age or price)."
As in how old the phone is, or how old you are? This amongs other things are not clear in your post.
My old 3G is mine. I can do what I like for it. If at somepoint I want to go to the effort of writing an OS for it I can.
At this point I'm not paying apple any money for it, so it's certainly not rental.
I've got two or more app stores on it, so that's ok too. (I know android has hundreds, but that's not always good, is it now aptoide)
What more control can I want? I can make phone calls when I want, I get email when I want, I can crush the phone if I want. That's pretty much full control.
Plus it runs ios, how do I get control of my Nexus 4 and control is to do that? or are you confusing custom roms for different OS's?