>Perhaps a partnership with some existing manufacturer that is struggling for relevance in the phone space like LG or Motorola?
This is kinda what Jolla did with the Sailfish X program - they periodically choose one of the mid-range Sony Xperia devices that are part of the Sony open device program, then port Sailfish OS (a pretty nice mobile Linux distro) on it and sell licenses to people.
It's not a partnership per se, rather a symbiosis, but has been working like this for years. Also nice that they support the devices long after official support for the original Android firmware has ended. :)
This is kinda what Jolla did with the Sailfish X program - they periodically choose one of the mid-range Sony Xperia devices that are part of the Sony open device program, then port Sailfish OS (a pretty nice mobile Linux distro) on it and sell licenses to people.
It's not a partnership per se, rather a symbiosis, but has been working like this for years. Also nice that they support the devices long after official support for the original Android firmware has ended. :)
For more see:
https://shop.jolla.com/
https://sailfishos.org/
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sailfish_OS