Yeah with permissions there is this stupid feature in Android and Google Play protect that keeps revoking permissions if you don't use an App for some time.

Also they are still constantly trying new ways to "figure out" what Apps should run in the background instead of giving the user any controll. I.m.o. there should just be a "Allow up to run background" permission you can turn on and off and which logs exactly when a app was running the background.

I don't know if it's increasingly. Auto update has never worked consistently for me on any android device. It also seems most people have an issue with at least one messaging app not getting notifications. It's just with the changes in each version things break slightly differently every time.

That varies wildly between manufacturers and ROMs. AOSP and consequently LineageOS have consistently been pretty clean. I have apps running in the background for literal weeks at a time. KDE Connect never fails, Linphone is solid on one of my devices and also stays connected for weeks at a time.

Then there's Xiaomi and Samsung which seems to be competing for who's got the worst software imaginable. People keep saying it's better and the TouchWiz days are over but I've yet to pick up a Samsung and not go "ewww" at it.

Pixels are okay but there's nothing like a bloatware free custom ROM. No AI garbage, just plain basic Android.

The problem is essentially, most people don't buy phones for the specs, they buy them for the fancy stupid features the manufacturers keep pushing to distinguish themselves. For 99% of the people, that's effectively all bloat. Samsung in particular seems to do everything possible to pretend it's not really Google's Android but Samsung's Android. Everything is different for the sake of looking different. Developers despise Samsung because their apps works well on every phone except Samsung because it's "special".

Unfortunately yes.

I'm lucky enough to not have that much issues on my side, but I'm not surprised you are encountering those.

Not updating consistently might be by design. Updates are often staggered between different geographical locations as well as different randomly selected groups, so that bugs can be caught early and updates avoided if an issue emerges in production.

Play specifically offers an A/B and graduated rollout mechanism, but you bypass this if you explicitly check for updates.

As for notification consistency, sadly this has been a problem for about a decade as Android tries to wrestle with background services.

I've switched off all pings for messages for a bit of peace and quiet, but for some reason there's one Whatsapp group I'm in where my phone still vibrates if someone posts.

Depends. If you use heavily customized android ROMs with aggressive battery saving measures like colorOS, hyperOS/miui, etc. Things may be a tad rough.

I've not had any such issues. Runs like a dream on my Xperia 10iii