I would rather pay a one off ransom to google, than have them harvest all my data and profit from them in perpetuity.

Better yet, you can buy a used pixel phone.

Pixel 9 Pro handsets are going for around $500 on the secondary markets like ebay. That's a only a single generation off from their current Pixel 10 models and you still get OS and security updates until 2031.

Not a bad deal and pretty crazy how fast smartphones depreciate now.