Tentatively wanting to press the buy button for a Fairphone 6. Currently using a Sony Xperia phone with headphone jack and 1Tb microSD card (it’s one of my backups), BUT on factory OS and still on a privacy learning journey. Considered the move to Pixel with Graphene, but have always had my lifetime collection of FLAC music locally. Phone = music player. Can live without headphone jack since discovering USB adaptor DAC / amps.

It’s certainly an option. My personal approach is with RethinkDNS, with the Wireguard functionality switched on (using my Mullvad VPN within Wireguard) and using local / On Device blocklists from the Rethink selection box. Not too challenging to set up and pretty much set and forget. I like the PiHole options, but never have got around to it.

As we say in my home town, “Wankers!”. I need to have this WhatsApp BS as its the only way to stay connected with older relatives and work groups. I’m using RethinkDNS on my phone and have blocked as many Meta DNS and network links as I can find online. Exactly none of them show up on my firewall logs! The connections in/ out appear to be via “safe” routes, which if blocked then break wider functionality. To use yet another completely unheard of home town phrases, “Bastards”.
For Android:
Just my personal strategy. My firewall logs show its quite effective but not fully impervious.
I’m with you and not perfectly sure that Brave is the best, but I reserve it for my logged in accounts only. IronFox and Cromite both set to private with no history or logs, and used for single use opening of links from Lemmy etc. Trying to isolate / separate third party cookies and tracking as I can. I also use Rethink DNS as firewall and with three filters for whole android device.