Another option: you can choose not to sign in to Google play. And just use other app stores. This limits Google's data collection somewhat as they don't know yo

Another option: you can choose not to sign in to Google play. And just use other app stores. This limits Google's data collection somewhat as they don't know your account. It's not as good as micro g or a completely ungoogled phone but the benefit is you can use manufacturer roms with all security features like bootloader locking turned on. I do this with my OnePlus as I don't like leaving the bootloader unlocked. Anyone can pull a disk image off it through recovery then. Another benefit of this is that Google play services like location and push still work, they don't require an account. But you do give up extra privacy compared to the other options. There are grapheneos and calyx which do allow bootloader locking but they only work on pixel phones and those are really poor value for money IMO (expensive but still having fingerprint on the back, midrange soc etc). And really hard to get in Europe now. The 5a 5G is not coming here and probably the 6 isn't either. So this is why I ended up with this option. At least Android has a wide spectrum of choices. With Apple it's take it or leave it.