Samsung carries a lot of advertising crap, tracking, etc. Pretty much every phones is going to be worse than Pixel in that respect, since you get Google's tracking + whatever pile of crap the vendor added (which in the end they all seem to do).

So it's basically:

Pixel with GrapheneOS > iPhone >> Google Pixel with PixelOS

I wouldn't recommend anything else. Theoretically Fairphone + e/OS may have been an option, but the security is crap.

I guess there is Sony, you could even install Sailfish OS, no experience though.

> Theoretically Fairphone + e/OS may have been an option, but the security is crap.

Lack of current privacy/security patches and the current privacy protections in Android means having very poor privacy too. There's no equivalent to the privacy protections added by GrapheneOS either including ones also offered by iOS now such as iOS having a more basic equivalent to the GrapheneOS Contact Scopes feature since iOS 18 and iOS having better storage/media control than Android similar to Storage Scopes in GrapheneOS.

> I guess there is Sony, you could even install Sailfish OS, no experience though.

SailfishOS is much less private/secure than AOSP and is largely closed source. It's the opposite of a more open OS.

I've owned a few pixels but for whatever reason in my case the hardware had a habit of randomly dying just outside of the warranty period. But maybe I can revisit.