The network I use, which also happens to be the one with the best coverage in my area, is about $1/GB

https://silent.link/

I pay about half that per year for my data plan

Apple is the safer alternative vs. anything Google

Not really. Research has demonstrated that iOS and Android send very similar types of data even when users explicitly request to opt out. Apple was even so arrogant as to not bother responding to the authors of this paper when they reached out for comment (unlike Google which did reply).

https://www.scss.tcd.ie/doug.leith/apple_google.pdf

iOS is also much more hostile towards 3rd party apps than Android, greatly limiting what they can do. This makes moving to FOSS options harder.

Due to driver inconsistencies, updates breaking things (even the phone part), and the inability to use a lot of “normal” apps

Sounds like you haven’t tried modern GrapheneOS with sandboxed Google Play Services. Neither of these are issues for me and I’ve been using it for years after switching from iOS.

The are a lot more people who want to degoogle vs. the people who understand how to do rom flashing

Flashing GrapheneOS takes like 2 seconds and requires nothing but a desktop/laptop and a browser. If you can read, you can install GrapheneOS with minimal effort.