I think you may have a point, It's kind of weird how the first 10 years of smartphones, was an ever higher climb for better phones, driven by competition.
But now that everybody are dependent on the phones, they all agree on taking useful features away???

Fuck. You're probably right. It's all about nudging us towards the behavior they want.

It’s probably also a little safer with only system apis accessing system hardware. If you look at how the camera assembly is one piece and apps basically access the whole thing securely.