I’ve got a bunch of older Android devices (mainly Samsung s3, S4 and s6s) that run lineageOS. Some of them are completely degoogled, but it makes life really difficult to use them as “regular phones” without access to google play store. Way too many apps most people want to use are not available any other way.
Samsung have not demonstrated being any more user friendly than google in my opinion. My S6Edge ran out of OS updates about 3 years after if was released. I have iPhones several years older that are still getting updated to the latest iOS. And there’s a whole bunch of crap undeletable Samsung software on their devices that I trust even less that Google’s apps.
I tried this for 2 years. Eventually I ended up with 2 phones - the google store one (with a burner number) and the non google store one. Things like being able to order uber (you used to be able to order on the mobile browser) made life difficult. Eventually I gave up.
Current strategy is to only have a burner google account on the phone and rotate gmail accounts every year (on phone refresh). Keep personal google accounts off the phone (using linux desktop) with a vpn and in firefox with privacy settings.
Use containers on the browser - never mix google, whatsapp facebook and other activities.
Use a phone registered in EU for privacy settings. Use a paid burner gmail account (again I figure it is better for privacy).
Annoyingly I also need an iphone for i-message with family members.
Samsung have not demonstrated being any more user friendly than google in my opinion. My S6Edge ran out of OS updates about 3 years after if was released. I have iPhones several years older that are still getting updated to the latest iOS. And there’s a whole bunch of crap undeletable Samsung software on their devices that I trust even less that Google’s apps.