Sadly you are in the vanishing minority of Android users who care about this. Most people just want a phone that works. So much that many people switch to iPhones because, admittedly, many things are work better in their walled garden, and the phone is "simpler" because the OS hides many details or doesn't allow you to do anything.
I used to spend lots of time trying different ROMs, figuring out SU and SELinux stuff, and fighting with SafetyNet. These days I just use stock Samsung ROM. I still have Termux on my devices but only use them occasionally when I don't have a laptop next to me and need to do some hardcore stuff. (I might even switch to iPhone someday because the password autofill experience on Android is just atrocious and infuriating while Google has done almost nothing for the past few years.)
Personally, I would suggest trying out GrapheneOS on a modern Pixel before going to iPhone. They remove 80% of the Google annoyances and have a very good security profile compared to anything rooted and most custom ROMs that don't bother with relocking the bootloader.
You will still fail to pass device verification, but that doesn't really matter to me. I don't use tap to pay (that's why NFC credit cards are for) nor play any mobile games that actually care.
I could not imagine using a stock Samsung ROM personally, but to be fair, it has been years since I tried. Maybe I'm still just too burned from the bloatware of the early Galaxy days.
Samsung phones are pretty nice these days. It's also very easy to migrate to a new phone. Their software migrates almost everything including side loaded apps.
For some definitions of works. It's frustratingly inconsistent for me, very often it'll give me no suggestions on apps it's filled many times before and I have to go open it and manually copy out passwords.
It works great with other apps. I've switched phones a couple times and had no issues that I can think of with passwords. Maybe sometimes some banking apps prevent FF from opening, so I had to manually lookup the password, but I think the most recent time I didn't have this issue with any apps. Also, I use FF to randomly generate most passwords.
> e.g. if I open doordash and try to log in, which opens a web view with a login form, does autofill popup?
yes, I just checked with Gmail > random website in Gmail WebView, and Firefox autofilled it fine. That being said, WebView's can be unique app to app, so can't promise it works for door dash as I don't have that app.
I assume "official stock OEM Android" is what you meant, and I hope you'll give specifics of the things you mention. Alternative browsers like ungoogled-chromium-android, Cromite, Vanadium, and some others purport to have stripped most of that out from the Chromium browser, while GrapheneOS, LineageOS, /e/OS, and maybe some others purport to do that at the OS level.
I don't underatand. You're saying people can't use PiHole with Android? But lots of people do that... Or do you mean it can't be installed on Android itself? I googled that and it seems it can be...
You still can’t set the IPv6 dns server manually and you can’t permanently disable IPv6.
When you install pihole and set it as the dhcp server and also as the IPv6 „Ra“ server the ipv6 dns server from your router will still be used primarily. Making dns based blocking on android ineffective
I used to spend lots of time trying different ROMs, figuring out SU and SELinux stuff, and fighting with SafetyNet. These days I just use stock Samsung ROM. I still have Termux on my devices but only use them occasionally when I don't have a laptop next to me and need to do some hardcore stuff. (I might even switch to iPhone someday because the password autofill experience on Android is just atrocious and infuriating while Google has done almost nothing for the past few years.)