Samsung embeds IronSource spyware app on phones across WANA

All Android phone but pixel ones have bloatware preinstalled. Some are worst, like Xiaomi.

If you don’t want bloatware (spyware), it’s either pixel or iPhone.

The trick is to define "bloatware". Is that known knowns (stuff that's visible), known unknowns (stuff that's added that's not visible), and/or unknown unknowns (stuff added we are pretty sure is there but can't prove)? Apple adds all kinds of carrier-specific crap on every phone, but it's not readily discoverable. Android mfgrs must also because of carrier contracts and country-specific regulatory approval requirements. There's likely little means of escaping this without a BYOD non-Android, non-overseas, non-Apple phone that may or may not exist. Surely there is an obvious, viable alternative somewhere I'm missing that I hope exists.

That's incorrect. Zenphone is a bliss.

OnePlus has a phenomenal software experience

What carrier specific crap does Apple add?

I like the Samsung apps on my Galaxy.

Wut? Besides that you can uninstall whatever you don't want or even replace the operating system with a bare android or whatever else you want, you're forgetting about Fairphone, Murena, and probably others. I had an apple phone for work once and it's not like it doesn't come with a lot of bloat preinstalled and tries to get your permission to snitch on where you are and what you do. It has toggles for some of the things but you can only do what apple lets you do. Also consider daily use, where you will install third party software to get stuff done: you're not better off with the necessarily commercial software from apple's store than with pretty much anything you can get on f-droid and other open source stores

Recommending Apple for privacy only makes sense for those who don't actually care and just want the feel-good premium brand

Just an example. WhatsApp on Android force me to give it the contact permission. Without it, I can’t write to someone or call.

On iPhone, I can use the app without giving it the permission because if meta were to put up the same bullshit, they would get their app rejected from the store.

Now, you say you can install barebones Android ? Ever tried it ? It suck, lineageos and other have security issue, often poor battery, lack features and plenty of bugs.

You could uninstall the bloatware on your stock operating system ? Except that you don’t always know what is necessary and what isn’t. Meta (Facebook) have 3 app preinstalled on Samsung, 1 as user app, 2 as system app. Other are systemized and have extremely convulated name, or even embedded in an actual system app like the antivirus in Samsung device managements that used to send back lot of data to Chinese server.

Fairphone are expensive and not well built, murena ? They run e/os/, exact same issue as lineageos.

No really, it’s either pixel (and I’m not speaking of grapheneos, it got more and more issue with play service integrity being forced everywhere) or iPhone. Pick your poison.

> Without it, I can’t write to someone or call.

It works just fine with OpenContacts.