I currently use an Apple phone, with a special camera covering case. That's pretty much my setup, plus opting out of anything that can be opted out. It's long bugged me that there is no way to manually disconnect the microphones. Looking into it there only appears to be the Linux based PinePhone that offers switches for disabling camera and microphones. While that's great, the rest of the phone isn't so much.
I'm a casual smartphone user. I don't want to put months into jailbreaking, tweaking, monitoring connections etc. I know though that both iOS and Android call home to transmit a bunch of private data. And now Apple is going to scan our data as well, ffs!
Basically I'm looking for a setup that would give me the best privacy with a quality phone (something similar to a modern iphone) and ease of use. Of course that's contradictory, but what would be the best compromise in your view? What is your own setup? I'm open to any suggestions and am even considering extreme solutions like getting rid of the smartphone altogether.
Then turn off everything you can in options on that phone, if you can root it, apk remove/freeze apps.
I de-googled, de-amazon'ed my phone, removed all accounts except google, and no longer use apps, i use a browser. (Except spotify/yt, because I listen to podcasts more than anything else.)
2FA on everything.