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The one main thing that bothers me is that open source smaller mobile phone OS projects lack the privacy and security or other options.

I've installed EOS from https://e.foundation on a Samsung S8. This phone was bought in England and has nothing Russian about it, but when I use TOR browser on it the duckduckgo settings default to Russian results despite the exit node not ever being based in Russia. Something about the handset/app is suggesting Russian connotations.

Additionally, the default E OS app store appears to be a mirror of another store, but is registered anonymously and has an opaque operating policy. These are just a couple of examples from one OS - which, otherwise, is a really great implementation of a de-googled handset. But the next concern after de-googling a handset using one of these operating systems is the true boundary security of the device. If we are using our mobile phones for email,texting,perhaps banking, then is it a case of choosing a better master?

For example, should I just use apple iOS and have some degree of known privacy successes and failings but be happy they are a known known? If I use EOS on the Samsung S8 it seems completely obvious that I should not be doing internet banking on the device, as I cant guarantee the authenticity of the side loaded banking apps or reliability of the EOS app store.

People like me want to use an open source OS on their mobile phone but have nagging doubts and valid worries about security. Surely I cant be the only one worried that EOS and others are actually inherently insecure, customising aspects of android that the open source developers dont fully understand all aspects of android and the technical changes they are making to parts of the core operating system.