I am starting to look around for my next smartphone. My current phone is a Samsung S8 Active, which I like well enough. I appreciate the rugged aspects of it because I tend to be hard on phones. They get wet, they get dropped and they may get submerged occasionally. In today's world, I like that I can wash it as well. I hate (con brio) bixby, which is Samsung's answer to siri, et al., and cannot be completely disabled or removed. I can live with it if a Samsung is my best option, though. I would like my next phone to be unlocked and able to work with multiple carriers so I'm not tied to my current one by my phone. I wouldn't mind a dual sim capability also, but it's not really important to me.
There are a number of options out there now: Ulefone, Blackview, Cat, Doogee, etc. I've been doing some reading and trying to sort through features. Some of these phones have great specs on paper and an astonishing number of features. I don't need a FLIR camera or night vision or the ability to run an endoscope but...who doesn't want all the toys? Does anybody on the board have any experience with any of the current crop of rugged smartphones or recommendations?
One specific question/concern I have is, are there brands I should steer clear of on the basis of privacy issues? Basically, almost every one of these phones is going to be made in, or use components made in, China and at least some have, in the past, been found to be surreptitiously sending user data back to unknown destinations (as opposed to Samsung, I suppose, which is at least up front about trying to look in my medicine cabinet...). I would love a privacy oriented phone but the pickin's are slim (maybe only librim at this point?) and there doesn't seem to be any kind of rugged option.
Thanks