I tried this with the OpenMoko, was a great phone(if it even noticed an incoming call) but with a small user base, and they were almost all devs I think, the app situation was too weak and the software bugs were many and never solved.
If Pinephone gets a use base as big and more importantly as active as the one around the N900 fine we will have everything we need; but if we are stuck getting our needs met by say running an Android compatibility layer it adds kludged utility but also signifies a failure of the platform.
I really believe we (Mameo/Meego) were successful because even faint hearted incentivization by Nokia was enough to leverage the large pool of Linux devs who didnt have to tweak existing FOSS code already on github much to develop for the N900.