I alwayse check this before downloading apps because i dont want apps to spy on me. And what i noticed in practise is that usualy payd apps offten dont collect any data and even if they do its less data than free apps.
So obviusly they collect that data to sell it and to make money that way. And if you think only big companies for advertising buy that data you are wrong.
Gowermants, secret organizacions and milioners who want to control your life is bying that data the most.
You can use graphine os i think its the best. Do you know what is open source software?
I used to have a wileyfox phone using cyanogen OS, which was a fork of android with a lot of security and privacy features. That forked again into lineage OS at some point in the latter half of the 2010’s.
I mostly stuck with motorola phones after that, as close to a vanilla OS as possible without going google… but I stupidly bought a Pixel 6 Pro about 2.5yrs ago… the price was hard to ignore, but regretted it ever since.
I only replace phones when the become obsolete and security is an issue, or the phone actually fails… this one is going strong and I keep meaning to look if it can easily be jailbroken to install and alt OS… But it’s been a very long time since I did anything like that and I find myself falling behind on modern tech stuff as I get into middle age.