Do you really not have prepaid sim cards in the US? that you buy with 5 bucks and it lasts one year, and then you just top it up for another 5? Those carriers are really milking you good over there.

Its a dumb phone, you insert a sim card and thats it. The telco will know where you are based on the sim connection to towers (as with any other phones) and all calls and texts are stored, but other than than you dont have to worry about anything else. I suppose you dont have to login to some account to make it work therefore even if it harvests any data, it does not know who it belongs to (no add ID) so not saleable. Its pretty easy, no real identity (through email, account, etc) attached to it = private.

It does not come with the Google Play Services and you dont have to log in to any account in order to use it. Its okay, a default for many other roms who build on it. Yes it uses google for AGPS etc but if google collects that data, who does it belong to? No Add ID, no Account, who´s phone is it?

The thing is that today you dont even need access to the coversation when you have metadata. Imagine, a woman calls a number of center for planned parenthood, is on the phone for 20 mins. Then she calls a number of her gyno doc for couple mins. Then her phone is located at that gyno doc a week later for 2 hours or whatever it takes. Do you need to decrypt the conversation? You already know what was discussed.

Nothing from Meta, Google, Microsoft is good. It might be encrypted, but the apps suck everyrhing they can from your device and connect it to your real identity you have on FB, IG, Gmail emails…