Smartphones are not safe

Every software is prone to vulnerabilities, but I would stay away from designed vulnerabilities, especially in firmware black boxes, by a company whose main business model is grabbing data for advertising and surveillance purposes, as opposed to making actual things. I am also in favor of distributions run by individuals, who I consider to be sane and not making false claims. For example, I will not use a LINUX distribution that claims they have a new operating system that is ‘compatible’ with LINUX apps or that they can teach closed source applications how to ‘behave’.