One of my conditions to go with a cell provider is whether I can bring my own phone. I've found BLU phones to be highly serviceable, and works great with an MVNO (I use one on T-mobile's network). I am not associated with BLU, just a satisfied customer. The sub $200 price point is nice and the hardware tradeoff hasn't been too bad. I do worry about their phone-home issues though.

That was a big motivator for me as well when I finally jumped ship from Verizon. Admittedly, I went to Fi, so I was lucky that the limited phone selection worked out for me. The ease of international use more than outweighs that for me.

Adb yo, you can remove packages without root. Even then, I do wonder what fragments are left behind. I fear Facebook/Google/et. al are too intertwined with the likes of Samsung and LG.

Even when I remove all related packages, Facebook stuff still shows up in the app manager as 'Not Installed'.

Anybody have a complete list of packages and know if removing them prevents data harvesting by FB?

It can be either a carrier thing, or a phone manufacturer thing. Of all the phone I deal with at work (3 models each from all the major manufacturers) I loath the HTC ones most because of the amount of shitware you cant uninstall.

Another key reason I prefer iOS.

It's just as valid of a reason to prefer 'stock' Android or something like Lineage, though. Not having to worry about the minutiae of operating systems can be a definite platform benefit though, it's just not worth the tradeoff for me.