iPhone user here:
I’m sorry if this is a really controversial question, but I really enjoy the system-wide transparency and glassUI of iOS. I want to migrate to Android, but the big manufacturers (Samsung, Google, OnePlus, etc) all have a flat UI design by contrast. In my research, the closest I could find is MIUI, but the phones that run MIUI don’t support all the carrier bands in the USA. Does android really not have the option of a glassy transparent UI?
Sorry for my information dump, i think it has less to do with your question and more with choices from the start for privacy and other featurs like replaceable batteries so feel free to skip it completly if it does not interest you or go away on any point you like
i suggest you buy something like fairphone, that is more expensive for its stats, but you wont have any trackers that you dont like and when there are no updates for the os anymore it is very easy to switch the os. i think shiftphone is like the cheaper less repairable option.
At least with those companies no tracking from the producers, replaceable batteries and custom os choice (if launcers dont give enough flexibility, no ios obviously) are guaranteed.
At least the replacable battery feature should be interesting because you could have a second battery and change them in a minute on a travel instead of needing to recharge it with a powerbank.
I think booth companies have a more mediocre/enough camara quality so i suggest getting a seperate cam if you need more quality. At least my FP3 with an app that has like no ai to help it looks terrible compared to all the good looking cat pics but i still can make pics of documents and are able to read anything.
i suggest downloading besides the google play store the aurora store (more private than google play) and f-droid which has only free open source software, maybe not more qualitative but in like all cases without ads and it does what it should.
Likely a lot of apps, especcially the free ones, contain ads that could be checked with classyshark3xodus which is definetly available in the f-droid store.
the alternative stores would have to be downloaded from a browser because google does not like alternatives. That needs to allow from an unknown source (the browser, i suggest brave or firefox with the add on ublock for ad blocking because ads are nasty) and instantly reverse that you allowed firefox downloading apps from external sourced because some of them actually contain viruses.
I remember a user that was for appel because they would not even allow to download apps free from the web (he had an android and was shocked that the cs:go app was a virus and cs:go is a pure pc game)
Sorry that it got sooooo long… hopefully it is helpful, maybe not