My personal motivation for doing these things is precisely because the device doesn't just work™ out of the box. If it was sufficient at its job, such hacks would not be required. It's because it isn't that they are reached for.

Yes, the current trade-off seems to be that stuff like that can break. That isn't the desired state, but it is what was prescribed by the manufacturer who seemingly has an interest in making the device less functional than it could be.

I wish there was an easy way for the layperson to test dial emergency services without connecting to a real operator.

Maybe a different 3 digit number that goes through all the same hoops as 911 but it answers with an automated success message then hangs up.

Back when I was developing my DivestOS project, test calling 911 was actually a thing I tried to do each month for this reason.

There was one time where I did ship an update that broke select calls but I had it fixed on all devices in under 24 hours.

don't know android, but ios does a lot of unspecified things during 911.

For example I have location services turned off, but a picture I took while on hold with 911 showed up in my camera roll with full location information. I suspect every app gets full precise location information during 911 (which sort of makes sense in a life-or-death situation)

I wouldn't be surprised if other stuff is affected, like networking/vpn, microphone, etc

Don't worry, that can happen on a stock Pixel phone too. Nobody in the Android ecosystem really cares about reliability.

damn, that sucks. I fully agree with the sentiment of your last sentence.