Okay, I'm wrestling with this myself. I love having software all tight and cozy, but really wondering about the hardware space.
I can imagine the pixels having a slew of backdoors. For example, your phone still connects to cell towers? (Emergency calls only) do you run it on airplane with wifi 100% of the time?
im sure if a major crimes unit wanted to tap into my phone or figure out my ID they still can but my setup compared to say an apple phone with sim card sub... the privacy difference is immense and we cant let perfect be the enemy of better. i bought the phone with cash and have never done anything to identify my real life identity with it. one funny benefit of a phone# without id is i never, ever get spam calls anymore. so much to the point that i was unsure it was working for a while. i point to that as a relative privacy gain.
All fair points. I'm thinking of getting a fairphone as my next phone . hoping to remove some of the hardware unknowns
