Do be careful, your choices are very limited. All the carriers in the US, except TMobile today, have a whitelist of devices. Even if you make your own phone or buy an awesome phone from out of market, it won't work.

Technically, there is no reason it won't work. But the carriers block it from registering on the network unless roaming. Our non-American devices have been kicked off every network now except TMobile.

So your choice is really just the small list of devices they choose to support and 75% are the same phone. Samsung whatever with some various sized screen and various sized storage. Or Apple iWhatever.

They make your life hell with a non-standard carrier phone. And yes I've been buying out of region phones for 20 years now, even back with Windows Mobile and Palm devices with 2G text based web. Every year it gets harder and harder.

I'm happy with Motorola. I don't buy high end phones though, as I don't care about paying 400 extra for a good camera.

I have a G42

Perhaps Fairphone?

A Pixel with GrapheneOS is okay but you don't get Android Auto, which kinda sucks.

Google Pixel or Nothing phone

"smartphone" doesn't matter. it is a computer that runs software. the only question is who controls that software? free/libre software is by definition one that you control. and what you described means that you dont control your device.

so advices: easy way is to just install lineage os or graphene or some other open source android version. you will control it. i dont advice to install google play services.

other advice: you can get a sony phone because it can run sailfish os. also i believe those are great. otherwise install open source android, lineage or something.

sailfish has android emulator (it costs money) but sailfish is not android. it is a linux/qt based system. very polished. not as polished as open source android, but it is fast, lightweight and beautiful. native sailfish apps arent feature rich but do you really need feature rich? then you can get more apps from fdroid store and use android emulation layer.

other, better but harder option: get a device which is well supported by postmarketos.

postmarketos has several user interfaces but neither of those is what you have used to. i believe it is the best option but you must prepare yourself to be able to change. most probably you wont have a working camera. thats ok, i live like that.