I'm weighing this option myself now, but honestly between an iOS device and a mid-tier Android phone, it's hard to tell the difference. Email / chat apps / web browsing is more or less the same.
Certainly the amount of telemetry collected by Android is markedly higher [0], but that's not so much of a UX difference.
Note that, per your linked source, the payload size is larger on Android, but iOS actually collects more types of data by default (like location, which iOS collects by default but Android doesn't)
> my OEM's variant of Android has annoying additions that aren't allowed to be disabled. I'm hoping that iOS will be at least a slightly calmer experience
Would android's additions still seem like annoyance if stock (and every variant) included those additions?
tbf, I think iOS is a pretty good OS (like most modern OSes).
100%. By additions I mean to say things like notifications that cannot be dismissed or hidden, or other aspects of this firmware that to my knowledge don't occur on any other ROM, but seemingly exist to annoy without providing a benefit.