The Natural Philosopher wrote:

Spend 1.5 hours trying to get email to work.

Uninstall or ignore the inbuilt email app, use K9 email instead.

God these smart phones are utter ****. There is no forward delete key

you'll probably have to install Hackers keyboard app for that, backspace
seems to suit most people, you should find that sliding a finger L/R on
the keyboard acts as left/right arrows to position keyboard, which may
help, if not try the gboard keyboard.

and the keyboard is designed for people with elf sized fingers.

use a keyboard that supports swiping, rather than hunt and peck.

I guess you use voice recognition.

I tend to avoid that, unless driving.

Question: I uninstalled default app 'candy crush arse hole' but it still
appears on the desktop, which is a mess because I disabled anything to
do with Microsoft.

uninstalling ought to remove icon from the home page, but try dragging
it towards the top of the screen, a red trashbin should appear, drop the
icon in there, if not then junk whatever launcher sansumg have inflicted
on you and use a sensible one.

How can you move desktop icons?

just drag them, if you want them in groups drag one icon on top of another

Also how to enter contacts - I can see the 'disk' when I plug into USB,
but its not obvious where the address book is..

easiest is to enter (or sync) them into a google account, and let the
phone sync from that account.

https://contacts.google.com/

The phone comes preloaded with **** that you cannot get rid of.

If you want a phone that isn't full of bloatware, buy a pixel, or second
hand nexus.