BTW: Lately I've had this urge to ditch my smartphone completely, who wears an "ankle tracker" willingly when all you get on it is propaganda and useless notifications in return?

my original reason for having the phone 24/7 was for calls from my wife. period. of course then smart phones come along and now theyre full out computers so its too easy to whip it out at any downtime to "catch up" on the news/social media/whatever ... as if you could ever keep up with all the garbage on the net anyway.
my solution:
i bring my Nook with me everywhere now. couple thousand books at my fingertips and no reason to go to the net for "info" or entertainment.
https://www.gutenberg.org/start there if youre new to e-readers, everything there is free and can be read on a Nook. or any computer for that matter.
and stay away from kindles... amazon trash
I've been looking at
https://copperhead.co/#hardware (CopperheadOS; hardened Linux fork) and
https://www.pine64.org/pinephone/ (Linux) as a replacement, but will probably just go back to something pure GSM style like Nokia 1200.
The problem with modern phone designs are that even if you trust the OS running on it, the hardware chipsets from various vendors can be compromised or have security flaws. Old GSM phones can be tracked as well, but you need local access to nearby cell towers to triangulate position, which rules out most threats besides police.