I find myself spending less money on useless stuff by not seeing as many ads as before and getting more neutral search results.
Before I was finding myself wanting to buy certain stuff because they looked cool in ads. Now I think more on what I want to buy and start exposing myself to that product or service after the decision was made.
Last time I tried (1 year ago), waydroid on UT used a Lineageos image, which means that you’ll get the same level of degoogling as a stock LineageOS system. Some internals still uses Google, but it comes with no Google apps for example.
From there it’s up to you to install or not Google apps and services. It does not bundle play services for example.
In many countries cheap/unlimited SMS was not a thing decades ago, so whatsapp filled that gap. Nowadays things got way better, but people are already used Whatsapp, and in some places companies even offer “unlimited whatsapp” in their plans, so seems unlikely to change.
I like Thunder