Both Android and iOS have malicious apps by default, if only geolocation service providers.
Most Android phones nowadays are bootlocked and will make your life miserable if you try to gain root, but there's still a few models that you can easily unlock to install a libre system of your choice (/e/OS, PostMarketOS, etc). That's undoubtedly the best approach if you don't want to be "forced" into anything malicious.
Apple is a notorious enemy of free software, and especially on the iPhone products getting to boot alternative systems requires crazy hacks which is why we still don't have mainline Linux and mainstream distro support over a decade after the first hardware release. I'm not saying that Google's Android lines (Pixel etc) are much more libre-friendly (mainline support on Pixel was achieved by outsiders, not Google), but it's still possible to find new or refurbished Android phones without a locked bootloader and with good mainline support.
I honestly don’t care about running Linux on my phone. We’ve all seen what a mess Linux on desktop is. iOS definitely does not come with malicious non-removable apps like tick tock or Facebook.
I'm not sure exactly what you're referring to. I remember in older Slackware that not everything was very user-friendly, but ever since the GNOME2 era under Ubuntu i've had no complaints... and i'm providing user support for many inexperienced or outright tech-illiterate users.
I can't say the same for Windows with cryptic boot messages leading to full reinstall every now and then, and since Windows 10 users getting their account randomly & remotely locked for unobvious reasons... don't even get me started on the "i clicked the ad that said i had viruses and now everything's broken".
> iOS definitely does not come with malicious non-removable apps like tick tock or Facebook.
I don't exactly disagree with your point, but just because an app is not 3rd party doesn't mean it can't be malicious. See this comment for a (short) overview of evil software things Apple is doing: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32354388
Most Android phones nowadays are bootlocked and will make your life miserable if you try to gain root, but there's still a few models that you can easily unlock to install a libre system of your choice (/e/OS, PostMarketOS, etc). That's undoubtedly the best approach if you don't want to be "forced" into anything malicious.
Apple is a notorious enemy of free software, and especially on the iPhone products getting to boot alternative systems requires crazy hacks which is why we still don't have mainline Linux and mainstream distro support over a decade after the first hardware release. I'm not saying that Google's Android lines (Pixel etc) are much more libre-friendly (mainline support on Pixel was achieved by outsiders, not Google), but it's still possible to find new or refurbished Android phones without a locked bootloader and with good mainline support.