I hate all mobile operating systems because none of them is able to provide me the level of control I have on my Linux desktops and laptops.
But there's nothing I can do about that, so, at least, I bought the best phone on the market - S23 Ultra. It's a lovely device, I just dislike Google. Thinking of de-googling it somehow. F-Droid and Galaxy Store can work as Play Store replacement but I still need Google Pay and so on :/
LineageOS for microG might be what you're looking for. It is a compromise to give you the minimum amount of google while keeping the functionality you want. It features "fake" play services, which allow you to use banking apps and such while not actually running google. Itcomes with privileged F-Droid as your standard source for apps. I'm using it since 2019.
Thanks, I'll check this. I'm worried about s-pen functionality and the support provided (the official ROM has 4-5 years of updates) but I'll look into it.
I've been on the same boat. Luckily someone on XDA had made the stock rom googleless and it's been working great.
Im not using that gone anymore though (it was either my GSIII or my GS7).
If you are willing to buy a pixel from a store that resells them you'd evade paying google. You can get GrapheneOS which IS a very secure OS ... They have a feature called Sandboxes Google Play which is compatible with overwhelming majority of apps compared to MicroG. I think you'd really like what grapheneOS has to offer
Please know that Sandboxed Google Play does not use any additional privileges and makes googles apps run in sandbox like any random app you install would.