Is it even worth trying to preserve privacy on a smartphone?

I always used an always-on VPN with split tunneling as long as they've been available on a phone, until I switched to iPhone. Most banking apps break, a lot of websites send you through an endless captcha loop and there are plenty of other annoyances with an always-on VPN on this thing. Split tunneling worked on every VPN app on Android. The only VPN I know of with a sort of pseudo split tunneling feature at best is AdGuard, but I don't even bother with it these days. I use iCloud Private Relay, which isn't much of a VPN outside of Safari, but I've always liked the idea of adding at least some kind of privacy layer to my browser. Does it even really make a difference though? I can search something on DuckDuckGo and I'll still get targeted ads for it whenever I open TikTok. I have background app refresh disabled and I don't allow any apps to request tracking via iOS settings, but still these goddamn algorithms are so "good" it almost feels like they can read your mind. I know the easy…