What really would be great is an official communication regarding the timeframe needed to make the root thing possible, whatever the solution (although I think the possibility to root the vanilla OS should be given to the users).
TBH, it has been nearly 6 months I’m expecting to change my phone, my previous one is on the brink of falling apart now, and I cannot enjoy the phone I received several days ago because I cannot restore my data and my paid apps (which, like titanium backup, require a root access).
For what I understand, expecting the phone not to be rooted does not mean that the app developers by default require it not to be rooted (except for some apps; someone on the forum gave the example of a German banking app, AFAIR).
What’s a little bit disappointing is that this choice has been made several months after the first orders (I have found trace of the root thing there : blog post on the 23rd of September, 2015. I have ordered my phone on the 16th of July (at the time I did my order, less than 1000 phones were sold !), and I started this adventure with a really good feeling thinking we were really going to change the world.
Now for me this choice is quite clearly a bad gesture towards what I will call the “intermediate geeks”, i.e. the people that are tech savvy enough to know how to root a phone (and hopefully not make it explode), but not actively working on the internals (I don’t know of Android’s internal mechanisms, although I know what app deserves to require the root access). I clearly understood the reason for your position regarding the root access, but for me it’s overprotective for a phone manufacturer not to allow root access to their phones with GAPPS (given other manufacturers don’t seem to give much of a s**t about it).
I was really eager to receive my FP2, but now it’s staying patiently in its box waiting for its potential to be unleashed. And I’m filled with doubt as to what to do with this box … Shall I send it back ? I would feel bad because I abide to your values. Still, for now, the customer that I am feels bad because I didn’t receive 100% of what I ordered.