Almost all iOS apps are sending telemetry to data brokers like Facebook and the platform makes open source stuff extremely hard. It really is marginal when you look closer.

Yes, but only if you're foolish enough to install the apps. With Android, an individual app may or may not be a worse actor than it would be on an iOS device. But, it hardly matters since Google is primarily doing all the invasive tracking on an Android device, and you have zero control over this.

>Yes, but only if you're foolish enough to install the apps

If you won't install any apps why bother with a smartphone then?

It's hard to even find a good feature phone these days.

At least I'm looking for one now because my Nokia E5-03 died yesterday so now I have to figure out what to get.

I want something small, that I can stick in my pocket and not worry about the screen, with days of standby battery life, and where I don't have to read and "agree" to pages of legalese.

In the heyday of feature phones, I could pick one up for $20. Nowadays, those phones are designed for old people, and are more expensive than a cheap smart phone.

I heard KaiOS phones are good, including the "Bananaphone" (aka Nokia 8110 4G) that can be had for very reasonable amounts.

I just ordered a Cat B40 - https://www.catphones.com/en-gb/cat-b40/ . It uses KaiOS. :)

Frustratingly, it doesn't seem to have predictive text/auto-correct. :(

I get a ton of utility from the built in apps from Apple.

In my case, my job requires it. Otherwise I would only have a feature phone.

If you're someone who's able to figure out how to block such things on Android, then you'd be happy to know that this is possible on iOS by using apps like Lockdown that work completely on-device. [1]

[1]: https://lockdownprivacy.com/

My solution is to not run either; Having to take extra steps to block that is completely unacceptable.

The problem with iOS is that it's built on the assumption that you can't not trust Apple and their services. An iPhone literally trusts Apple more than it trusts you. It won't let you past the initial setup unless it gets an okay from the mothership. On Android you could at least disable all the Google stuff.

kind of, if you go through 15 different obscure menus and hope you haven't missed any, and some stuff like push notifications you can't not go through google anyway. Google also forced manufacturers to make the location toggle more obscure.

It's at least still better on Android.

On my Android phone I have no google account and I've disabled anything related to google. Yes I worry I've missed something somewhere, but on the whole, at least I can.

I was given an iOS tablet as a gift, tried setting it up and it absoltely requires setting up an account with an apple and giving them a phone number. Haven't found a workaround. So the tablet sits in a box unusable, because I'm not giving apple a phone.

Point being, the ability is still there if you want it. There's microG which is an open-source reimplementation of Google services minus the nasty parts. And even if you do use Google services, you can still sideload apps pretty easily without any Google involvement whatsoever — something that iOS lacks entirely.

Privacy is actually behind on Apple, as long as they 1) don’t allow proper adblocking and 2) actively boicot webapps in favour of installed apps that can spy much more efectively

They allow VPN and DNS-based blockers, request interceptors in Safari (so-called Content Blockers) and are adding support for WebExtensions to Safari in next iOS release. Plus there are 3rd-party browsers with build-in content blockers, like Brave and Firefox Focus. Safari itself is doing clever stuff with Tracking Protection (https://webkit.org/tracking-prevention/).

All apps I run use SafariViewController for in-app web browsing, so the same ad blocking systems kick in, too, and the app itself has very limited capabilities to track our web activity. Facebook is sole notable exception.

They also added "App Tracking" prompt recently. I doesn't do much for technical standpoint (like DNT header in browsers), but Apple _can_ enforce it via app publishing restrictions - only if they choose to do so.

I'd say they are very close to Android or desktop macOS.

> They allow VPN and DNS-based blockers, request interceptors in Safari (so-called Content Blockers)

Yeah, DNS based blockers misses a LOT of ads and webannoyances. And if you think that the content blockers are good enough you probably havent been using youtube lately on safari as they are now able bypass all current content blockers that I tested (adguard[1], 1blocker, wipr).

> ... and are adding support for WebExtensions to Safari in next iOS release.

Yeah, but I'm not holding my breathe that they will allow extensions similar to uBlock and noscript (hope to be wrong).

> I'd say they are very close to Android or desktop macOS.

Anyone with experience using uBlock/NoScript/uMatrix can attest that content blockers on iOS is not close at all, it's just a skeleton of uBlock Origin capabilities.

[1]adguard created a shortcut extension to bypass the content blocker restriction but its utterly annoying to do it everytime some random video.

Request interceptors are simply subpar. I understand the motivation, which is prevent adblockers themselves from spying on you, but in practice I would prefer to be able to install uBlock origin which is excellent on desktop and Android.

The Safari WebView restriction means there is no browser choice.

I cannot put any trust in iOS supporting WebExtensions in a meaningful way, given their track record of undermining web technology - but hopefully I will be proven wrong.