If you do it the manual way - not unlocking the phone and doing it through settings - you can wipe it sure, but when you try to set it up it requires the prior Google account credentials to proceed. No creds, no passing go, just a shiny brick. It's been like that for years.

Also might I recommend you take a gander at GrapheneOS for more intense security capabilities than stock.

You can factory reset it easily. You can't use it without the previous Google account credentials afterwards. You can't reuse a stolen Pixel which has Google account logged into it.

For what it's worth, they're trying to fix that with Android 15. Not sure if this is one of the features they'll also be back porting to older phones too like this article briefly touches on, but either way it sounds like if you factory reset the phone, it can't be set up again unless they know your login: https://www.wired.com/story/android-15-theft-detection-lock/

Google says in a blog post, the company is adding four data protection features that can help keep your information locked down. The first stops your phone from being set up after a factory reset, unless the person knows your login details. “This renders a stolen device unsellable, reducing incentives for phone theft,” Google vice president Suzanne Frey writes.

Edit: just checked. I can completely bypass all my locked down Google Pixel settings to factory reset my phone pretty easily if I press the right keys in the right order. It would be pretty easy to steal and resell my phone.

Mind to share what "Keys in the right order" are? I mean a link, of course, because in my experience you just can't do that with a locked bootloader.

AFAIK you can't wipe the IMEI and if you report it stolen to providers they will block it from using their networks. (It will only be able to use wifi.)

Same for Samsung afaik. Pop into the bootloader and just wipe everything.

Im pretty sure u cant fuck with a device that has a locked bootloader without unlocking said bootloader which requires u know the password. And u definatly cant recover data without passcode unless u can extract the hash from whatever chip holds it (shouldn't be possible if u have a tpm) and bruteforce it. Ur data should be encrypted and u shouldn't be able to tamper with os without unlocking bootloader which once unlocked will wipe all device data. Might be possible if u do some dodgy power injection directly into some of the chips but thats pretty advanced stuff.

The encryption on Android devices is pretty strong, as long as you use a good screen lock you should be fine. Yes they can reset you phone, but accessing your data is a whole other level.

If I had illegal shit on my phone, I wouldn't send it to apple servers by using an iPhone. They are the first who would comply with a surpena. I'd use GrapheneOS on a Pixel and use an obvious duress pin like 1234. If entered it wipes your encryption keys and avoids restoring your data.

And if it gets stolen, it is gone and I'd get a new one. This is the cost of having proper opsec.

Edit:

But I also think that freedom allows for more exploits.

This is a common misconception called security through obscurity

As everyone is pointing out you're just wrong about this.

Also apple is overbearing AF. I recently had several back and forths with my IT department about an old company mac laptop I used to have. Since I had signed into my apple account once, Apple permanently tied that laptop to my account and wouldn't allow the fucking IT department to fully wipe it.

Keep in mind also that I would have preferred to not have or use an apple account (they kind of force it on you, even asking you to login to iCloud constantly even if you've literally never used it once), and even though I could login to the apple account in my browser and see that the laptop wasn't listed under my devices, IT was still locked out.

Literally the only way to fix this was giving the IT dept my apple password so they could authenticate then sign out of it. There was nothing I could do remotely about it. This is a security issue in itself. Zero reason I shouldn't be able to use my account remotely to remove or sign that device out. Zero reason I should have to give my password to another human. Except for apple being shit.

The apple security theater is widely believed but it's still largely theater.

Edit: before you tell me I didn't have to give up my password, understand that I fucking know that. I could've driven to the office, told my employer to fuck off, had them ship the laptop, etc... all of which are things that shouldn't be necessary. I took the least shitty option at the time. Kindly fuck off if you are so dicksloppery on apple that you can't understand the obvious point: pretending every shit decision is about security doesn't shield you from all criticism.

The issue here is that while baseline apple is more secure than baseline android, a user with knowledge or a guide can improve the android security by a lot, whereas the apple baseline is also the ceiling. There's stuff you can do with iPhones but if you don't trust apple, you are kind of fucked.

Android people that mention security won't be using a stock phone from the store, they will have disabled stuff, enables alternative stuff, or even installed a completely new android based OS, and this can't be done with iPhone or iOS.