In the fight against "Weapons of Mass Distraction" I went to a Qin F21 Pro and used ADB to remove everything distracting.

This might be a way back to the iPhone for me though.

I strongly identify with the author's feeling that their phone had a kind of "gravity" before removing these apps. I described mine to somebody as the sense I was carrying around the ring of power in my pocket. It felt heavy.

If you are in a room full of people and you close your eyes, you still feel the presence of those people and your self-consciousness is thus mobilized. There is something similar going on when I have a phone full of apps. Even when it's off, I can still sense their presence and some part of me is still online, idling and using resources to account for that.