My intention is to buy the cheapest smartphone I can reasonably get as I need to use a phone for professional reasons; the company uses Whatsapp and other applications I do not want to have occupying space in a smartphone I use for my personal life.
I’ve been loading my phones with FOSS applications from F-Droid for years now but I am aware the loop is tightening and continuing to do so is becoming more and more difficult.
Ideally, I would like to keep this phone as much as possible exempt from connecting with Google. This means I don’t intend to load an account on the phone and instead load F-Droid and Aurora to get the software I want to use.
Is it a monthly stipend? If so, and it’s enough to pay for a decent plan, then IMO that is a fair alternative.
I wholly agree with you about not using personal devices for work. I’ve had a work-issued phone for almost 15 years in varying forms. I set up an automation to turn on DND mode 5 minutes after my shift ends.
What I would do is find an older iPhone, like a 15 or something, and use that for your work device. My current work device is an iPhone 17e, and I just got it like a month ago from our IT dept to replace my aging-but-still-perfectly-functional iPhone 12.
The company has a standing contract with am operator and they pay in bulk several numbers; we don’t get an added value to our paychecks.
Even better. You supply the phone, they pay for the plan. No more thought involved.