Hi! While your idea is understandable, i think we have to think about one thing: what about other vendors ? It's not like Samsung, Xiaomi, Fairphone etc. run on open source hardware. If you use any smarthpone, you have to accept you'll use closed source hardware. That being said, if we speak about hardware quality Google Pixels are the best ones, that's because you can install an alternative operating system without compromise the device's security. It does not make sense to go "fuck Google" and then buy another smartphone which came from a company that does the extact same thing - spy on you - but without the possibilty to install an alternative OS.

As a second thought, i think the theory "Google puts backdoors on Pixels to spy on users" has a big fallacy: Google already do that, but with a clear and legal privacy policy (photos, documents, backups, contacts, messages, emails, search history, location history and so on -- they can literally see everything about you). So, why they should do something illegal ? And for what purpose ? People put all their life on a service which does not encrypt anything, and if police needs data they can ask google and Google will give data to them. No backdoor needed.

Now, i'm not defending Google, of course. I'm just saying, hardware wise (and if you think about using an alternative privacy oriented OS) Google Pixels are the best choice.

A lot more has to put regarding this topic, but i don't have time to give you more information, i'm sorry :(

I will link the GrapheneOS's FAQ: https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

I wish other companies would design phones with the requirements for GrapheneOS in addition to being repair friendly... But I'm daydreaming I guess.

You could buy one second hand, I did with mine.