China forced Apple to remove any app where the developer isn’t registered in China. Meaning they asked Apple to remove 95% of the apps and games available in the App Store.
Poor iPhone users, basically they will get a “wechat handheld” and that’s it…
They removed google but added their own state spyware. If you block the phone from phoning home (with Tracker Control, for example), the phone will still collect and save (into a user-inaccessible part of the phone) all those metrics, and eventually die, since it can’t store any more. I got 6 months out of my Chinese phone, before it filled up its metrics memory and automatically shut down permanently.