If you don’t purchase from carriers then there are lots of options out there. Fair phone makes a pretty decent phone new phone, pixel is great after you degoogle it. Older one plus phones are generally a steal. If you wanna get really adventurous (test bleeding edge totally free software with no restrictions) there’s the pinephone. Just be warned that one is straight up unusable as a daily driver imo. There are tons of great options if you purchase through channels other than carriers. What just sucks is phones that you would typically buy that would be unlocked are no longer unlocked if your only choice is through a carrier. I even remember a while back some phones would lock their bootloader when you brought your unlocked phone to their network if they sold a equivalent version of the device. I haven’t seen that in nearly 10 years though and I think it had something to do with oversight on manufacturers behalf and poor choice of distribution of firmware.