I love the post! I recently bought myself a Pixel 7a for the same purpose for cheap (not from the Google Store) and although I love the phone of course -it takes amazing pictures-, I've been immensely scammed by the "unlocked" verbiage sellers use especially on Pixel devices they sell online. So reading your post, you reiterated just like lots of people online, to ONLY buy your device from Google. Honestly I just didn't like their prices but I see why now...

Thanks for the lengthy post. Very detailed which is awesome. I love the path you're on, and I'm the same, doing everything I possibly can to deGooglise and deApple my mobile life at least.

I have a few things I'm currently doing regardless of the device I use:

1. Proton Everything: First, I always make sure the apps/sites I use are cross platform. I use Proton heavily, all products, paid for the year, in btc, and I combine this with the use of SimpleLogin to create aliases on the fly for all the times I'm forced to sign up on stupid websites without revealing my email address (Proton allows you to have multiple on the same account).
2. Password Manager Everything: I believe that people's passwords are the mere extension of one's life honestly in 2023. So I use Bitwarden (both cloud and self-hosted).
3. I use 2FA for almost all the main components of my life that I need the most secure, with my wife as a trusted backup entity for all my stuff and I set up her device to be redundant as well.

That's about it. My plan with my Pixel is to keep it and use it on Wifi only, until maybe next year when I feel like buying a newer one from the Google Store; I really want Graphene but I won't break the satsbank (yet) for it now.