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ROM means Read-Only Memory and is used in Android as such.
The ROM is the part of your system that is: able to run on its own, write protected and thus not changeable.
Many/All manufacturers implement a way to bypass Linux' restrictions/file system permissions to be able to update their ROM ie. write to /system.
The normal user is not able to write to that /system partition, which is independent form the /data partition, where all your apps and data is stored (/data is not needed to run Android).
The only thing those two partitions share is (not always) the same hardware/memory chip.
The contents stored on /system contain all software needed to run Android on that specific device including: drivers, configurations, scripts, applications, frameworks etc.
They are read-only for the user and only writable after remounting as a system user or superuser/root.
Therefore ROM can be considered a valid and correct term for the Android system's /system partition/ROM partition.
In other words, both OS & ROM are technically correct and this repeated meme needs to die, it's semantic word play. NOBODY in the history of referring to Android has ever used ROM to refer to Read Only Memory. However, the GrapheneOS image does in fact contain sections of ROM, as does OneUI or OxygenOS or Ubuntu. Otherwise anybody could install or delete anything they felt like as if it was Windows 95 allowing users to delete System32 files.
Or how about that smart phones are more computers with telephony modules rather than phones with computer modules, yet we still call them phones.
This is all equivalent to the "ackshually" meme and just comes off as excessively pedantic