I also 100% use airpods with my Samsung phone - I tried a few other models, and they were all garbage for one reason or another while my wife never had any issues with her airpods.

With the andropod app, you basically get first class support with them, and my pair has now been chugging along for a few years with no sign of dying on me.

Couldn't agree more with your last sentence as well - the fact is that every single major tech brand has a myriad of issues. Apple is very far from perfect, but so is Google, and so is Samsung, and so is Microsoft. If buying from any of those companies makes you a sucker, then 99.99% of people are suckers - including most of the people standing on their soapboxes in this thread, as i highly doubt they're all using purely OSS solutions on pine phones and old Thinkpads lol