If you buy a Samsung phone, after initial setup (be sure to Opt-out of all the extra ToS), install all the google equivalent app (calc, calendar, contacts, phone, etc) enable developer mode and remove all the samsung variants via adb. Takes an hour but well worth it. Some packages/apps can only be removed via adb. On a brand new samsung, there are three Meta/facebook packages installed in android as hidden even if you have Facebook app uninstalled. Most of the samsung bloat, including One Drive can be properly removed like this. Phone runs silky smooth & battery lasts longer too after this process. My phone has very little left of samsung, but I do unfortunately have to use google's apps, which works great for what it is.

Don't try to remove the Samsung Gallery, as it will break the camera.

Don't remove all the Knox packages, as they will break NFC/Wallet apps.

You can remove all the AR/VR Emoji shit, half of them use the internet...

You can remove the "Weather" package. This is supposedly a widget.. right.

You can remove Hiya spyware package."spam call detection" straight from china .

You can remove netflix, youtube, instagram, snapchat, spotify, microsoft apps and other preinstalls this way too (instead of just disabling some of them). You can always install from the store again if needed.

I hate what modern tech/software ecosystem has become.

This is what it means to let someone else own the platform for your computing needs.

Stallman was right, and nobody ever listens until it's too late.

After fighting with it for half a day; I returned the last Samsung I tried and got a Fairphone 4 with E/OS instead.

Which... actually runs a lot of software out of the normal google app store anyway. But it also has a tracking blocker installed by default, and nothing is mandatory.

Couldn't be happier.