[userbinator]

The closest to a "generic" smartphone is probably the Mediatek reference platform(s), indeed found in various Chinese smartphones. Except for presence/absence of certain peripherals like sensors, those tend to be almost identical in hardware and software. Source is unfortunately not officially available but occasionally leaked along with (extensive) documentation, and there's a small community of developers who work on these cheap devices. As a bonus, they also tend to have a completely unlocked-by-default bootloader.

https://www.slashdata.co/blog/2013/05/the-mediatek-phenomeno...