I used ios, android and windows phone and no you cannot remove all the apps installed by manufacturers. Especially Samsung phones (using Samsung as example cuz it is the most popular in android). They have lot of stuff installed in them that cannot be uninstalled in normal way maybe with adb and special debloater tools but then some apps randomly crash. Everything has two on Samsung like two stores, two email apps, two photo apps etc. on apple this is not an issue. Of course this is not a problem with every manufacturer. I still have oneplus 8 as secondary phone even that has lot of stuff. I have used customs roms since nexus 4 days i know how minimal android images look like with minimal gapps (pico). As far as i know none of the android manufacturers can match minimal android or can be modified to match minimal experience without using custom roms. While ios can be configured to be significantly minimal if you want right after setting it up. I strive to use minimal stuff. I use arch and nixos and configured them to be as minimal as possible so i do know little bit about it. So in my opinion in the current state if i can only select one os then ios is better compared to android (as available in devices available to purchase) i would prefer android in custom rom format but google seems to be making that impossible and moving lot of apps to depend on google play services. You can say lot of shit about apple like not allowing third party engines, shitty app store policies while still allowing sketchy apps on app store, no side-loading, no option of third party stores, vendor lock-in for system backup cloud provider, late to lot of features, heavy repair prices, anti repair using individual component serial number lockin but I don’t think bloatware is one of them. You can remove all but essential minimal apps on ios if you want to but definitely not on android. Sorry for long rant.
I see lot of discussion justifying 8gb vs higher. I think we can go round and round around this topic all day. But thing is ram is cheap just fucking put more ram in apple. Freaking base steam deck is selling for 350dollars? Has 16gb ram and apple device will cost at least 1000 dollars just put in more ram. They can always make more money by selling higher storage options.