Only thing that would make me use an iphone is side loading and the ability to place my icons wherever i want. Its crazy to me that icons have to start in the top left. The hardest place to reach especially as phones have gotten bigger. Such a dumb restriction.
I had the 2nd and 4th Gen iPod touches and the way to do it back then was to jailbreak it and use an app that installs blank icons so you can "arrange" the pages however you wanted. Good times.
Generally, as far as I understand side loaded apps work as long as you don't reboot your phone. Which is kind of a major issue. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure the way apples current side loading works just isn't very applicable with day-to-day use.
Edit: you may be able to bypass this restriction, but as far as I know side loading apps onto Apple phones is extremely difficult. Even jailbreaking an iPhone is extremely limited unless you have a really comprehensive knowledge and then even at that point it is still extremely difficult and relies on people who are very good at what they do. But due to apples restrictions are still not as good as just something you could do out of the box with an Android. In full disclosure, it's been a very long time since I've ever properly used an Apple product. The last time i jail broke something from Apple was probably my iTouch B way back in like 2014 at the latest maybe? I just haven't been within that ecosystem in a long time and all my knowledge is just really acquired from kind of observing what is around. And cursorly looking into it. For me, I have no reason to ever want to go back to an iPhone. Even if I could side load apps, the restriction of where I can place icons on my home screen frustrates me to no end. Especially as phones have evolved and gotten larger its just like it's such a old school bygone concept. I don't even understand why they're so insistent on keeping it.
What? I think you've heavily confused sideloading with jailbreaking. The apps don't disappear after you reboot. You just have to have it refresh every 7 days. With SideStore you don't even need another computer to do stuff. It's convenient as long as you don't need more than 2 other apps. You do NOT need to jailbreak to sideload. If you jailbreak, you can "sideload" infinite apps.
A couple of years ago when I was trying to find official IPAs I used appcake. You probably want to grab an adblocker (preferably ublock origin) before visiting
Also, again, I recommend using SideStore (with on-demand activation in wireguard, which I've made a PR for) which will auto-refresh
Do you have payment methods on your Apple ID? Even if you don’t, you can try to switch your region on the Apple ID website. When it asks for payment method, choose “none”.