Nick

just to save you some time in your research, here's sort of an anti-recommendation: the phones by Purism might look like a good option for de-googling at first glance etc, but 1) they're not actually Android devices, they run a "mobile distribution" of traditional Linux, so running Android apps on them is difficult to impossible, and 2) the company is apparently really bad about giving people refunds for returned or defective products, which is a big red flag IMO

as someone who has tried degoogling and running custom ROMs on and off since 2013, i can safely say that it breaks more and more regular apps these days. i used to run microg (https://microg.org/) but at a certain point apps started very heavily integrating google's push notification and their play store infrastructure that they no longer work with microg. in my experience, the best "middle path" would be to just not log into a google account on a phone and install/update apps using a third party apk installer like aurora(https://aurorastore.org/). but there are certain apps which now require a logged in play store to even start. so yeah, if you want a non janky solution to using a lot of popular android apps, i wouldnt really recommend degoogling.

on to phone recommendations front, im sorry i dont know enough about USA specific networks and phone models to be helpful. but on the camera front, anything from the google pixel lineup should work well.

I run Graphene on a pixel 7a. I don't love the phone, but Graphene runs real well and can still run Gapps stuff inside a little sandbox, so you can Just Install Lyft. It is weird that one of the best OSS android systems really requires you to buy an unlockable google phone. 7as have been on sale because they are heavy and awful. The 4 was the best... Too old now

with a disclaimer that this is not from firsthand experience, but from reading what users in privacy and security focused spaces say about Android devices: for de-googling, surprisingly the google pixel is supposed to be one of the easiest to install a custom OS on. i also think they’re pretty reasonably priced. i don’t know much about the individual models or their camera capabilities, so i can’t speak to that aspect.

for software, i see privacy advocates frequently recommend GrapheneOS, which severely restricts app permissions to prevent icky tracking behavior. Google Play services aren’t included, but can be installed as sandboxed apps without the special permissions that they would have in a conventional Android installation. like most things in the world of digital privacy, some convenience and simplicity is sacrificed for the sake of these restrictions, so it’s really about how much convenience or privacy you’re comfortable with giving up for the sake of the other. hope this helps!

Whatever you decide on, consider buying a refurbished. IMO, a top of the line phone from a couple years ago offers better bang for your buck than a brand new budget option.

holy shit