In my opinion, the issue is that a cell phone is such a free-software-hostile environment that arguably GPL software shouldn’t “be allowed to” come into contact with it in any capacity if the spirit of the GPL were being upheld.
How are phones free-software-hostile? I know IOS is, but Android not really. There’s a list of open source Android distributions. Although not very good, they are viable.
Actually, maybe making it a realistic possibility to drop in a recompiled replacement should be a part of the GPL. I remember people were talking about this decades ago
It does feel out of place how that isn’t in the GPL.