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< Ask advices about smartphone changing when you try to remove Google of your life
The most compatible solution, the one that gives you the best privacy without costing you functionality, would be to get a phone that will run GrapheneOS (presently, that means a Pixel). GrapheneOS runs real Google Play Services in a sandbox separated from the rest of the OS and applications. However, they only support these devices for as long as Google does (3-5 years) because of the inability to update kernel code and firmware blobs independently. But they do take privacy extremely seriously (sometimes to the point of security nihilism).
What I'm currently doing is using a phone supported by LineageOS for MicroG. MicroG replaces Google Play Services for most purposes. It comes with F-Droid integrated as a system app, but you can install proprietary apps with Aurora Store. I have not found any proprietary apps that didn't work except for some Google apps I wanted to install in the "work profile" sandbox. The only problems I've found is that all of the free mapping/routing software (like OSMAnd+) do not look up addresses and occasionally provide weird routing; and there are no decent Free Software voice synthesis engines (I installed Google speech services, but forbid them network access).
What you're currently doing is what I did until recently — have Google Play Services installed, but uninstall all of their user-facing apps except for Maps.
Meh. Buy a Google phone to not use Google ecosystem, I found this counterintuitive and hypocrite, but maybe is the best solution here, I don't know. 🤔
I want to buy, for my next phone, a phone I can keep for a long time with security support.
Like I said before, I don't know if I really want to use custom ROM any more on my main phone, lost functionalities, manage issues, etc… My main concern here is I want to remove maximum of the Google services of my (personal) life, but I don't want to sacrifice stability, functionality, and usability. 😅