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?
Avoiding apps if you can and focusing on using the web and/or PWAs as a good direction too. Lot of the stuff out there for apps really should not be an app to start with. Then there is F-Droid which has most of the actual apps you need.
The ones not in fdroid and where you can’t use a web app, and must have, these are not so many. For me this is some health devices, some transit and travel apps, my local library, a hearing test app, Google Maps, my bank app (for check cashing). All of these also run just fine on GrapheneOS. Lot of those don’t have to be on my phone though if you only have one android device maybe they do. Really transit and travel apps, maybe my local library, and Google Maps are the only ones I use out and about.