Unfortunately I think its becoming the norm for “smart” devices to have adds and bloatware. Honestly, on my next TV adventure I’m either getting a non-smart tv or never connecting it to the internet and just using a mini PC to view content. This topic makes me inner Louis Rossmann come out lol (he even covered this topic too)
I was having the same conversation just yesterday with a relative and was mentioning that once you are invested in the apple ecosystem, they make it difficult to leave as all your data and backups are stored on either iCloud or there are other apple products that make the ecosystem difficult to leave. Personally for myself, I’ve only used one iPhone but never was heavily invested (as I used Google apps over the apple ones) and have used an android ever since and I enjoy being able to sideload apps, use open source apps from f-droid and also prefer the level of customization that apple doesn’t offer. Also, if you do switch to Samsung and get a S or the current Z fold, you will be able to use DEX and benefit from that.
The A54 is a great midrange phone but just to shed a bit of background info on call recording is Google made it so that after android 10, apps that would record calls don’t have access to the microphone during a call… If there is a workaround I don’t know about but I believe call recording out of the box isn’t a thing and has its limitations