One thing I hate about Android phones these days are the opt-out sync features. All my data is synced to a magical location, and once synced they can never be erased. If you make a single mistake, then all your data has been essentially stolen.
For example, I created a 'Samsung account' to try out the heart rate monitor on S5. I didn't know that if I create an account like that, the phone instantly uploads (syncs) my pictures, contacts etc. to a server somewhere. Sure, maybe that was mentioned in the long EULAs, but it's not practical to read through all the EULAs everytime I crete an account.
In addition, the 'Samsung account sync' app was installed on default, so I didn't even get to accept the app (or even read what access rights it had).
When I took my first couple of (private) photos with my old galaxy nexus, my phone proudly informed me that my photos had been uploaded to Google plus. (They were marked private on plus - but the app was itching to share them with everybody.)
I was shocked and horrified. It might have been fixed since then - I've become much more paranoid and turn that crap off.
Is Apple any better on this? I'm thinking that my next phone is going to be an iPhone because of the regular updates over Android, but is it as hard to stay away from iCloud and not accidentally send everything there?
From my experience, iOS rather asks twice than not at all. I have yet to detect a sharing feature where the intentions are not clear. Also, every privacy related access is prompted separately, a freshly installed app has no permissions on anything - so it's usually a non issue when installing apps.
There is absolutely no need to use iCloud with your iPhone and the settings page allows very fine grained selection of what should be synced through iCloud. I also have yet to find a 3rd party app that activates syncing through iCloud (of its content) automatically, this is generally all opt-in.
For example, I created a 'Samsung account' to try out the heart rate monitor on S5. I didn't know that if I create an account like that, the phone instantly uploads (syncs) my pictures, contacts etc. to a server somewhere. Sure, maybe that was mentioned in the long EULAs, but it's not practical to read through all the EULAs everytime I crete an account.
In addition, the 'Samsung account sync' app was installed on default, so I didn't even get to accept the app (or even read what access rights it had).