If you're tired of being tracked all day by these big companies, you can opt out and use a phone for exactly what you want, and nothing more.

The first thing you need to do is to get a smartphone. There are many alternatives, but to get the most secure one I recommend you to simply get a Pixel phone. Yes, they're from Google, but they're also ironically the best phones to use because of their hardware.

The best phone to get would be the latest Pixel 6, 6 Pro, or 6a. If you want the cheapest version, the Pixel 6a offers the best deal. You can also use older pixels, but their hardware is not as good and they're not getting support for much longer. We'll be using GrapheneOS as the operating system, so you can check the support for these devices here. For example, Pixel 6a is supported until July 2027.

GrapeheneOS is basically Android without Google, plus many security enhancements. Here are GrapeheneOS features in detail. There are other OS out there, but GrapheneOS is simply the best one out there.

To install GrapheneOS, you just need to follow the official procedure. It's surprisingly simple. You only need a computer, and a USB cable. There's a web based and a command line installations. I've used the command line one and it works like a charm.

Now that you've booted into GrapheneOS, start using your phone. You'll probably notice that it feels very empty, that's by design. It only has the bare minimum to start a phone. You can already use this for calls, SMS, and normal phone stuff. You can customize your device at this point, change backgrounds, and anything else you want.

One thing that you might notice at this point is that when you reboot you see a message saying "Your device is loading a different operating system". That's absolutely normal and it's because of the security of the pixel phones. You are indeed loading GrapeheneOS instead of the stock android the device came with. You can simply ignore that message.

You don't need Google Play Store to install apps. You can get them as APK files from the web (trusted sources only), or from other stores like F-droid, which lists open source apps as APKs. Here I wrote a list of basic apps that you can use. That should cover the most basic needs such as email, calendar, contacts, maps, etc. You can setup your own DAV server to sync contacts and calendar, you can have your own email provider, etc. Some people also use software like nextcloud to help them do this.

With a bit of time you'll probably find an open source app for basically almost every need you have in your smartphone. That would mean you have a completely useful smartphone without letting those big tech companies track you all day.

If you need to install other apps that require Google Play Services, like paid apps, Uber or WhatsApp, etc, you can do that as well. It's recommended to use a different profile for these apps as Google will be getting your information when using it.

To do that, simply go to Settings->System->Multiple Users. Then just click on Add user. That way you can setup a completely new user that will have access to Google Play, Google Services, etc.

On your new user account, go to Apps->Google Play Store and click Install. This will install a sandboxed version of all the required apps from Google. They will be running all the time in your profile, but with limited permissions, not like stock Android where they have more permissions than normal apps. After Google Play store is installed, you can simply install apps as usual, with your own Google account.

There are other stores like Aurora that allow you to install Google Play apps without using your account. I haven't tried them as I don't have that need, so cannot comment on that.

And that's it, you now have a great phone with no one tracking you all the time. Your battery will probably last longer as well.