I'm on Android 8.1. When turning off Bluetooth the entire Bluetooth menu showing previously paired devices changes to just show the string "When Bluetooth is turned on, your device can communicate with other nearby Bluetooth devices. To improve location accuracy, system apps and services can still detect Bluetooth devices. You can change this setting in _scanning settings_[link to the associated settings page]".

I don't see how this is fooling the user. Its pretty direct in stating what's happening and provides a link directly to the additional settings.

Maybe the "when this is turned off" bit not actually turning it off? That's not exactly up front. It could easily have not been called "turned off", like "OS use only" mode or "bluetooth not function except as a spy tool for Google" mode, something snappy ...

I suppose you have no problem with people calling things purchase when they mean short-term rental, either.

Do you really think it's called "off" when it's not off for any other reason than to fool users? They could make "off" actually mean off very easily.

Don't falsely quote, it's a disservice. The settings page never says "when this is turned off". It says what's happening in incredibly plain language and provides a link to the other settings which could confuse a user really attempting to fully disable the whole Bluetooth stack including OS level access. As others have stated, wanting to disable the ability of pairing is sometimes wanted while still allowing something like high precision location through Bluetooth scanning or other forms of 2.4GHz radio sampling. It's not entirely unreasonable for such a feature to exist, so to me it's not an unreasonable settings structure. Had they hidden the setting which could be conflicting with the user's request to disable all Bluetooth I would understand your point, but it's pretty clear what's happening when looking at the settings page.

Misquoting and falsely assuming things of others does a great disservice to your argument.

On Android 10 here, no such message on my Xiaomi Mi 8

I noticed that string about the additional settings disappears when those high precision location settings are disabled. Maybe you already have the precision location via WiFi/BT disabled?

I just setup a Pixel and it asked about this during the initial setup.

It's easy to miss stuff on initial setup. Here you got a shiny new device, you're eager to get it up and running so you can start enjoying your purchase. It's extremely easy in that setting to miss the small print. Even if it ain't that small.

I too did not know this, or even that there was a separate scanning setting. I'm also not sure where this message even pops up. I don't remember ever reading any time about apps being able to use Bluetooth while turned off and enabling and disabling Bluetooth did not seem to produce the message. I can't seem to find any mention of it in the Bluetooth help menu either. This is on Android 9.

I've found the scanning menu by searching for it. This is the only place that seems to mention allowing apps to scan Bluetooth while Bluetooth is off. It seems to be defaulted to disabled though.

It's easy to hide these things behind It Just Works (tm). Give me a device that doesn't "just work". I want actual freedom in what my peripherals are doing.

If you want actual freedom, you have to take time to look at all the menus.

.. and construe terms in the worst possible double-speak way: purchase means rental, off means "spy on you mode", ...?

Except more and more options are being taken away by Google, so there's no menu (not even developer setting?!?) that could give you any sense of freedom back. For examples (not all privacy-related), see clipboard permissions, background usage rules, Firebase notifications, WiFi scanning...

The only way to get freedom back on Android is to either run a very old version (bad!) or undo all the bad changes in an AOSP fork (difficult).

You should consider Librem 5 phone.