I don’t like so called smartphones (flashy devices to mine your data and other reasons) but my regular no touchscreen phone’s microphone is no longer working as it should, making conversations difficult.
Enter a smartphone I received as a present, my phobia (for lack of a better word) to smartphones and my (misguided?) obsession with privacy: I don’t want to use this smartphone as my default phone because I’m scared the carrier, ISP or google are going to mine my data and trace my calls.
Which might be an overreaction, because each time I use my regular cell phone, the carrier knows when I’m calling from, who I’m calling and how long the call lasts.
So I ask you: how much more data would I be leaking if I use my new smartphone for calls only, compared to a regular, no touchscreen phone?
And then install your main Apps from F-Droid (all Open Source and reviewed) and put eventual proprietary apps (get them from Aurora instead of Play) in a Shelter/Insular profile.
I would advise using Obtanium to get the apps directly from their source, ex: gitlab, instead of using F-Droid.
F-Droid replaces some proprietary bits and adds warnings and all.