Lifestyle changed from chasing shininess to focusing on privacy and value.
There are many incredible open source apps (list below). There are only a few apps that are painfully missing (traffic-aware navigation, banking). Often, there is an adequate web ui available.
The mindset that would make the transition easier#
You don't really need most non-opensource apps. Most apps you need likely have a web ui. The ones that do not - you can probably give up on them. Some apps with no good alternatives at the moment include: audible / library app, google maps / waze navigation.
You won't be able to use the apps you already bought on Google Play, and that's ok.
Some vendors, such as Threema, sell their app on their own instance of F-Droid. That's awesome!
F-Droid doesn't install updates automatically: need to manually apply updates one by one. The idea is that users should review changes before applying updates. Not practical for most people and may become irritating.
For apps that are not on F-Droid, you need to remember to periodically manually download apks (e.g. Mega).
More and more open source apps become available on F-Droid. Hopefully this continues and your apps will all become available on F-Droid.
Some apps install their own updates. Signal, for example, notifies when an update is available and you can approve the update in a tap.
Some authors have their own F-Droid repository, for example: threema. This way they are also able to collect payment without Play Services.
Pixel phone. The only phone with open source drivers.
GrapheneOS. A very active ROM that also takes privacy very seriously.
F-Droid. Doesn't install updates automatically (need to manually apply updates one by one; need to remember to periodically manually download apks from github for apps such as Mega -- but signal figured it out)
AnySoftKeyboard. The only serious open source, privacy friendly keyboard. Reduced usability compared to commercial keyboards such as Gboard.
Browse with Vanadium (built-in into GrapheneOS) and DuckDuckGo (great built-in ad blocking); use URLCheck as the default browser.