@dan_lerch I gave up trying a degoogle phone first time and my second try as well. My first try was on Calyx OS. My second with Graphene OS. My third time I was very determined and I've been off the iphone for a couple years now. Giving up imessages was huge. As well as an Apple credit card and a ton of family photos in iCloud. Ive spent $$$$ over the years in App Store. Most of which had gone obsolete over the years.
I have some tips for you folks trying to get off the Apple tit, er iPhones and the Apple ecosystem. There is some prep work to it.
1. Get off the Apple CC. It's a bad deal anyway.
You can use Revolut Debt card system as a good alternative to tap to pay without gplay.
2. Signal App is hands down better than iMessage. Ask you family and friends to switch. Yeah it's effort but hasn't been too hard. Now Signal App has a back up so switching to a different operating system is much easier.
3. MySudo App is my fall back. It's playstore dependent unfortunately. $50 a year for 3 VOIP numbers. Don't bother porting out your number to MySudo. If you've had a one cell number for years, it's time to ditch that tracking becon. There are alternatives to mysudo but none that work without a lot more effort and cost. This is not for using burner numbers.
4. Normal Epayment services will not work, if you set this up as I have, without some workarounds. Back to Revolut services. Get that or similar. It's better than privacy.com imo.
5. Get a pixal 8, 9 or 10. You can do this secondhand. Just make sure you get it unlocked and not Verizon. Get more storage than you think you'll need. You'll want both phones on you for awhile. While you workout kinks. Next year Motorola will have the next generation of hardened phone with Graphene OS partnership.
6. Carrier considerations. I use Mint Mobile because it affordable. Once a year i buy a full year prepaid as a new customer. $180 with unlimited data. I make up a name and use a prepaid cc. I use it for data only. No one gets this number. Now I have no more spam calls.
7. Consider your Apps with a lot more scrutiny. Try setting up webapps for things like banking. I needed to change my bank to a more modern and secure credit union. I sought out open source apps over proprietary ones where I could on the Fdroid repository through Droidify Store. I use The google playstore reluctantly, but do use it. Don't make this too hard on yourself.
8. At this point you got yourself squared away 95%. Whats the last bit keeping you to carry that iPhone around still? Might just be time to rip off the rest of the bandaid.

Ill post more to this effect. I understand the desire to get off the iphone as well as anyone. It is an undertaking worth doing. The piece of mind you will get back is really worth the effort.

But my favourite part of this, bar none, is how it's everyone else's fault.

It's Cursor's fault, Railway's fault, maybe even Anthropic's fault, someone's gonna hear from my lawyer.

The CEO of a company running a stochastic stack without access control, data hygiene or backups is blameless and powerless. That's AI's real selling point, after all: It's Not My Fault As A Service.

"This isn't a story about one bad agent or one bad API. It's about an entire industry ..."

Or, maybe it's you.