Right, I'm aware of that. In fact my phones are tighter than I mentioned. First, I've a number of phones, the one for calls is a feature/flip phone sans internet access. The others are internet-only smartphones and they're with a different ISP (I've multiple smartphones because I'm always mucking with the O/Ses and I must have at least one working). They're rooted and run either LineageOS or their native Android stripped of manufacturer bloatware and all Google stuff. Even then they always run with a firewall enabled, and the active apps are mostly from F-droid.

WiFi is set to only reconnect manually and mobile data is off until needed. There's lots of other protections too such as no Chrome browser and JS is turned off by default on the browsers (I've three different browsers set for different jobs, none keep cookies between sessions). With ad protection and JS off I never see ads. I've no social media accounts, HN is pretty much it—and you can hardly call it social media. YouTube is viewed through NewPipe and so on.

That's pretty tight. But it's easy for me because I've no need of social media and such. Right, my ISP can track me but I'm not in the drug trade or espionage so that's pretty irrelevant.

I've a box of older phones and GNU/Linux is a pending project for them. I'm watching Librem and I'll likely go that way eventually.

What I really want on my phones are manual click-type (air gap) off switches to switch the phone off in a split second, same with WiFi. Unfortunately, I've been spoiled forever. My ancient Nokia had a battery with a quick release button on the back. If say I was in a meeting and wanted to kill the phone quickly I could reach into my pocket and push the button and slide the battery abount 1cm which disconnected it—the phone was off in a fraction of a second, none of this nonsense waiting for the phone to shut down.

I miss that feature with a passion and I want it back.