Not many Android options out there. Basically just pixel or oneplus. Oneplus is dead to me until they bring back wireless charging and pixel is a trash phone with endless bugs and garbage battery life. Samsung ruined excellent hardware with garbage software with ads and bloat ware.
So anyway, if OP bring wireless charging back in next generation, I'll tolerate a few non removable apps to use a phone that actually lasts all day and has working Bluetooth.
Nah, Samsung didn't ruin their phones, carriers in the US did. Don't have any of that bloatware or ads on em down here in Australia. That being said, there are other reasons to avoid Samsung...
Samsung phones do have bloatware. These meta services are for one, appcloud. The galaxy store trying to push the deals and news consent wherever it gets launched. The lockscreen glance service. It can be worse. But samsung is not a saint you make it to be.
I literally said there were other reasons not to choose Samsung, I'm not making them out to be a saint. And I have literally had none of the issues you've described with the Samsung's I've had in Australia.
It depends on who you ask, to be honest. I'm a stock Android enjoyer, and using a Samsung device for 4 years felt like everything was bloatware. Not to mention that their software updates constantly break shit and never fix them, especially if your device is close to EoL
Not all of it is carrier related. I had an S21 unlocked (from US) and it still included Facebook and their garbage services, Netflix, OneDrive, etc. Also all of Samsung's first party bloatware and nonsense is prevalent regardless. Not to mention Samsung selling data and their tracking, crippling your phone if you root it or install a custom OS (and in the US outright preventing it entirely), etc. Can't recommend them or their phones at all, but its unfortunate because they have great hardware, just terrible software.
Yeah, that wasn't my experience in Australia. Every Samsung I ever had had google apps and Samsung apps preinstalled. None of the rest. And all those baked in apps were easily disabled if they couldn't be deleted (I couldn't delete YouTube, but I could disable it so I could run Vanced and not have the normal YouTube app be the default). I suspect that even though you bought a unlocked phone, it came with a bunch of shit baked in cos you are in the US. There's a lot of shit that is copacetic there (more generally speaking than just phone related) that doesn't fly in the rest of the world.
As I said, there are other reasons not to use Samsung devices, but all these stories I've gotten in this thread have not matched up with the experience I had in over 7yrs.
GOS cuts out the few reasons to even use pixel like call screening and Google camera. I hate Google as much as the next guy, but giving them money and then severely disabling your phone to avoid their services makes no sense to me.