While I was waiting roughly four years for my Librem 5, I found what appears to be the best solution yet, when it comes to having both privacy and a lot of good apps on the same device. This solution appears at first to be counter-intuitive. But it appears to be working very well for me.
1.) Buy a Google Pixil phone directly from Google. If you buy it from your phone carrier, this won’t work. I bought a Pixil 6 Pro directly from Google.
2.) Install Grapheneos on to your Pixil phone. Graphineos is opensource, from the Android Open Source Project. It’s easier than you think to install this new operating system. Just follow some simple directions from the Grapheneos web site.
3.) When you boot your Pixil phone every time after that, you are completely anonymous. Don’t enter your name and don’t log in to the Google Play store. Download all of your favorite Android apps anonymously going forward from the Aurora Store. All apps so far have worked for me.
4.) This is the best part. It takes a lot of time, but I get a great deal of satisfaction from it. Disable the Google Play Store and the Google Framework. No hacking is needed. There is an on/off slider in each case. You simply turn them both off. Then go in to the permissions for each app and turn everything off that you don’t think a given app should need. Do this to every installed app, one at a time. I also turned location tracking off in every app, including in Google Maps. When I need help navigating, I turn location services on temporarily until I arrive at my destination. Then I turn it back off. All of your apps run in their own sandboxes (in complete submission to the operating system that protects your privacy and doesn’t know who you are anyway). No app has any elevated permissions. They can’t talk to eachother. They don’t even know who you are. Even with the Google Play Store and the Google Framework turned off, most apps still work after they are installed and have been tested with the Store and Framework turned on the first time. If an app doesn’t work, turn the Store and Framework on temporarily and turn them both off after you close that app. Those controls are quick and easy to access. While installing, testing, and turning off permissions, you will see that Google has been put under complete submission. Each app will beg for each permission that you disable. Get used to clicking on the “Deny” button each time you are asked. Every time you do this, the app threatens to not function properly without that permission. Don’t believe it until you see it later as you use that app. It’s usually a bluff and the app works just fine. If you really like/need that app. It’s easy to grant the needed permissions immediately before you use the app, and then revoke that permission immediately afterward.
5.) There seems to be no end to all of the ways of controlling each app’s access to anything that could invade your privacy, and in adjusting system settings to add yet more privacy. By default, most invasive things come already in the privacy protecting mode. Even the location (GPS) seems to really be fully disabled when it is turned off. The only thing I seem to lose this way is the ability to use paid apps. You have to sign in to the Google Play Store to get access to paid apps. That is something I refuse to do. To install the Aurira Store, use the web browser to install the F-Droid store first. Then install the Aurora Store from F-Droid. I downloaded most of my apps from the Aurora Store at around 4:00 AM. There are limits to how many apps you can install at busy times. You can also reboot to reset your quota limits.