I agree, but it's a pain. I tried to run AOSP on an Xperia XA2. You are missing so much. Sony doesn't offer much software for your hardware on AOSP. F-Droid has

I agree, but it's a pain. I tried to run AOSP on an Xperia XA2. You are missing so much. Sony doesn't offer much software for your hardware on AOSP. F-Droid has like three orders of magnitude less apps than the play store. Even the many apps that don't rely on google features, hell even competitors like Microsoft offer e.g. their Word for Android nowhere else. In the end, you probably will install google services non the less, but this time from less trustworthy sources since google doesn't officially want or will help you getting their stuff run on ASOP. The system was generally unstable. I finally gave up when I noticed video playback in landscape mode turns the screen green, but works fine in vertical (Different apps, even ASOP stock apps, even after fresh re-compile) I'm now going the other route... using a sony image and rip out everything unnecessary. Neither seems worth the time for average consumers. Learned a lot, though.