I worry that these projects are asking me to either turn the phone into an ipad touch or a dumb phone. Do push notifications require microg/google? A communica

I worry that these projects are asking me to either turn the phone into an ipad touch or a dumb phone. Do push notifications require microg/google? A communications device (as opposed to a media player) that didn't have push notifications would be missing something required, in my use. It's my understanding that alternatives to google's location services exist. I'd just like a phone that allows me to chat/use apps/gps (let's put cell service to the side of a second) without being an OS-wide, logged-in, analytics tracker.