Oh I get it, I had a simillar experience with some sony phones with a good stock camera app. You could then at least root the phone and more thoroughly wipe the google bloatware maybe, maybe also install a firewall that blocks all that is not allowed. But maybe that is all overkill, difficult to say how much stuff this closed source google stuff is still active when disabled. You could try doing a tcpdump when connected to wifi to find out to what the phone connects when idling...
Discussion
My main phone is a Sony. I love it because it has an ss slot and a headphone jack its 5 years old and works amazing still. Its on lineageos and works well but won't record videos currently. And the camera app seems sub par. Not sure what I will do yet. Because I use different phones for different things I don't feel too worried about leaving a phone with gapps installed. I am really not sure what I would need to worry about. There isn't much too take and non of my personal information is used on it. 🫂