[simonblack]

I just don't like the idea of backdoors and/or malware calling home.

No such phone anywhere in the world. Mind you, not all calling home is nefarious. Unless you call keeping tabs on your spending nefarious. Google makes you a product so that it can make money off your advertising and spending data. Apple is no different.

And if you're connected to the US phone system, you're being watched by the NSA.

If you want some small measure of privacy, I believe that public payphones are probably still out there somewhere.

Oh and by the way, Apple iPhones are Chinese phones. They just have a misleading 'Apple' label stuck on them.