The problem is, right now we have only 2 choices. Living in the open world but getting all our information sucked dry by advertisers. Or live in Apple's protected little garden but not be allowed to leave it. And pay much more for hardware specs.
Neither are very appealing.
I don't want to turn this into an Android vs iOS debate, but want to highlight that one of the main complaints against getting an iPhone (cost) no longer really applies - it could even be considered a strongsuit. I agree that the walled garden can be annoying, but I've rarely found myself longing for Android customisation, and have very much noticed how some apps work much better on my iPhone. This is completely down to preference though.
I also care deeply about privacy, but even with 0 consideration for it, I think I still would've switched - I am super happy seeing Apple pushing it this hard.
(I recently went back to iOS after 2 phones and 5 years on Android)
Basically you're buying a 4-year-old phone with a modern SoC in it :) I don't think that is worth the price they are asking. I paid the same (440 euro) for my S8 3 years ago (it was out a bit over a year), and it already had a beautiful AMOLED screen, high screen to body ratio, and in particular DeX which I can't really do without anymore. And it's still fast enough now. I upgraded to that from my iPhone 6 which was becoming way too slow at that point (note: iOS 12 did fix this somewhat but by that time I had already had enough of it). Overall, the S8 aged better for me than the iPhone 6 did.
Compared to what you can get from Apple now vs the Android vendors, Apple is only ahead in terms of SoC when you're looking in the same price bracket. But that's not the only spec that matters.
> But I don't like them taking that choice away from me. ... Or live in Apple's protected little garden but not be allowed to leave it. And pay much more for hardware specs.
I pay Apple a premium to make these decisions for me. They make my life easy to live.
In this particular case, I'm aligned with their simplification, until their browser is the majority player. That's when it would be worth my effort to make an educated choice.