> Adding random apks or even downloading anything from the play store can legitimately be unsafe.
It has been unsafe, but Android was designed with this in mind and is continually improving its security model. For instance, Android 11 added a regular check-in for permissions you have granted to apps and tightened a bunch of other loose ends like background location access.
(In general, barring unpatched security vulnerabilities, it's about as unsafe as blindly clicking things in your web browser, or believing the weird robot that calls you every day really should know your bank account number. You can try to help this using technology, but it is not a technology problem).
Apple does the same kind of work all the time, tightening sandboxes and patching vulnerabilities, but they always have the crutch of app reviews to fall back on. But it is completely wrong to believe that crutch is the thing between iOS as a reliable platform and iOS as a malware-ridden hellscape. That's what Apple wants you to think, but their developers are not actually that stupid.
For evidence on how you can build a solid, reasonably secure platform without this kind of crutch, you might consider Linux on servers, desktop MacOS, modern desktop Linux (particularly stuff like Fedora Silverblue), even modern Windows. This is not a solved problem by any means, but it's solved enough that giving up, closing the gate and throwing away the key is completely counter-productive.
It has been unsafe, but Android was designed with this in mind and is continually improving its security model. For instance, Android 11 added a regular check-in for permissions you have granted to apps and tightened a bunch of other loose ends like background location access.
(In general, barring unpatched security vulnerabilities, it's about as unsafe as blindly clicking things in your web browser, or believing the weird robot that calls you every day really should know your bank account number. You can try to help this using technology, but it is not a technology problem).
Apple does the same kind of work all the time, tightening sandboxes and patching vulnerabilities, but they always have the crutch of app reviews to fall back on. But it is completely wrong to believe that crutch is the thing between iOS as a reliable platform and iOS as a malware-ridden hellscape. That's what Apple wants you to think, but their developers are not actually that stupid.
For evidence on how you can build a solid, reasonably secure platform without this kind of crutch, you might consider Linux on servers, desktop MacOS, modern desktop Linux (particularly stuff like Fedora Silverblue), even modern Windows. This is not a solved problem by any means, but it's solved enough that giving up, closing the gate and throwing away the key is completely counter-productive.