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Samsung's AdBlock Fast Removed From the Play Store (androidheadlines.com)
New submitter Alexander Maxham writes with the news reported at Android Headlines that Samsung's ad-blocking Android app called AdBlock Fast "was apparently ousted from the Play Store for violating section 4.4 of the Developer Distribution Agreement, stating that an app cannot disrupt or interfere with devices, networks or other parties' apps and services. (Also noted by Engadget.)
The F-Droid app store allows ad blockers. These are just two:
https://f-droid.org/repository...
https://f-droid.org/repository...
F-Droid only contains free and open source apps. Each of them is fully built from source. https://f-droid.org/
This is why Android isn't really Open Source in spirit. It is as closed as Apple is.
Hardly. Even on a non-rooted device all you have to do is tick "Allow untrusted sources" in the settings and then you can install stuff outside of Play Market as much as you like. Play Market is closed, yes, but it's also a separate thing and not required for using an Android-device. iPhones and iPads and the likes, as far as I know, require doing a lot more than just ticking a single box to allow installation of things from outside of Apple's AppStore.
AOSP _is_ open source. There exist projects which only base on AOSP and build it for your device. You then can decide whether to install the play store app, or whether you want to install alternative app stores, all independent from google. They all run on the android platform. Yes, most of android devices ship with the play store, but you still have the option to completely ignore it.
Android is not as open source as iOS. iOS is completely closed, and there are no good pure-open-source alternatives. Android is rather as open source as desktop computers. They ship with windows (most of them do), but still you have the option to install fully open source operating systems on it (like linux).
There even exists an only-open source app store: F-Droid. They only allow apps which solely have open source dependencies on their store. All apps that rely on one of google's proprietary on-phone services are forbidden. This even disqualifies many apps that are in theory open source, but which require some of google's on phone services (most prominent example is the signal app, developed by twitter).
Buy a good Android device with an unlocked bootloader and use an AOSP based ROM with no gapps. Use Firefox mobile with your favorite blocking extensions as your browser. Use permission control to restrict apps that are a bit too curious. There you have it : premium device, no ads, no tracking. It may not be enough if you wear a tinfoil hat but nothing is good enough for tinfoil hats.
According to XDA, Sony seems to be the recommended brand because they are developer friendly and produce nice devices. Nexus have good support too. Also don't buy your phone through your carrier.
It is not as easy as buying a phone off the shelf and there are some downsides but you have understand that what you are asking is not what most people want. People want tracking because it allows plenty of nice features (like Google now), they like free stuff and ads are an effective way of financing free stuff, and they just want things to work out of the box rather than control all the details.