I give up… Privacy is a fool’s game and it’s a losing one at that. We are slowly entering a world where more and more requirements are made on people to own a regular non-hipster cell phone. There are places you can’t even buy parking or look at a restaurant menu without having a proper cell phone.
Maybe the answer is not to flash some obscure on life support operating system on your Google pixel but rather… maybe the answer is to work within the system and simply adjust privacy controls as allotted?
The simplest thing you can do is to just use your phone as little as you can.
I use a regular phone because my model doesn’t support GrapheneOS or other custom OSs. So I just use my phone as little as possible: calls, whatsapp/LINE/telegram almost only for info about meeting people, not to discuss deep stuff. Proprietary backup deactivated. No games, no superfluous stuff if not a hardened Firefox as browser and my Bank app (sigh). All other few apps I have are FOSS and/or privacy oriented. I use syncthing with encryption enabled so I can backup all data on my desktop with little hassle and regularly delete photos/chats on my phone.
If I have to use a privacy invading app on my phone to buy a parking ticket or something similar: I download the app, block all permissions, use it, delete cache/datas and then delete it.
If I lose my phone tomorrow it would not even be a big deal because I have almost no data in it. I know it’s not a perfect model since a few apps and the phone itself do have telemetry, but it’s better than going around with a device filled with sensitive data. It reduces a lot of stress and it’s very manageable for me.