I've been happily running cheap Nokia phones for the last couple of years. It's vanilla Android with very little bloat, no ads and years of security updates.
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I am still loving my Pixel 6 Pro. Other than installing AdGuard, or just change your DNS, I pretty much use it as is. I turned off all the Google home or whatever that thing was to the left. Take a minute and go through your installed apps and turn off notifications for things you don't want or just uninstall. I don't think you could ever convince me to buy a Samsung again.
My only gripe is the size and how the camera sticks out. The battery life is great, I have plenty of space locally, and I can wirelessly charge my earbuds with it if I want.
I have the Xiaomi 13T Pro, and I haven't noticed any ads. You can buy wallpapers and ringtones, but there are also tons of free ones, and it doesn't pop up advertisements for it except once to show the function is there.
The new HyperOS although it looks the same and has similar functionality on the surface as MIUI, is way way better IMO.
Security and game center are gone, 2 of the top annoyances with MIUI IMO. HyperOS feels way snappier too. With MIUI the 13T Pro was slower than my old Motorola to turn pages in an e-book quickly. Now it's super snappy. HyperOS just feels better somehow.
I installed Firefox with uBlock Origin, and chose it as default browser. I also uninstalled "Community Center" I think it was called. An app to use various Xiaomi services.
There are a couple preinstalled apps, I don't recall if Facebook was among them, but they are easy to uninstall, it literally just takes a minute to uninstall.
But maybe Motorola would be more to your liking, they use almost completely vanilla Android, with only an app to configure Motorola specific features. I did get some ads for printing services on my Motorola, but it seemed to be more a Google thing than Motorola. (Haven't seen any such things on my Xiaomi 13T Pro)
And AFAIK you can still remove the search widget from the desktop on Motorola, something that apparently is no longer possible in completely vanilla Android. Reason enough for me to completely avoid Google Pixel phones. Why would they even want to do such a stupid thing?
What ads are you referring to? I gave Galaxy S 23 Ultra and I've never seen any ads in the OS.
It is easy to turn off ads on Xiaomi. I am using Poco X3 pro for more than two years and never seen one. Bigger problem with Xiaomi is media selector app and that they disable auto unlock Android feature (you can't unlock your phone automatically when at home or some BT device is detected).
I have the Pixel 7 Pro and there's no ad forcing. Some apps can push ads, but just block them or don't use those apps. I'm using the Nova Launcher though. Idk if that matters.
That one does seem to be getting a lot of attention lately. I just wish more phones offered on-device subtitles for phone calls and anything played through the device. Until another phone offers that I'm sticking with Pixel.