I've paid 200€ for my PinePhone. It is underpowered, but at least it doesn't have to waste its resources on rendering ads.

Where Android/iPhone users have "apps", I mostly end up writing small shell scripts around existing linux tools. My alarm clock "app" is realized via cron jobs; my TOTP "app" is a one-liner around `oathtool`.

Messenger apps are a bit tricky; I'll probably end up hosting my own matrix homeserver and then have bridges running for Signal and the likes.

There are plenty of apps for Linux phones because you get all of the Linux software automatically. What there isn’t plenty of is commercial pop culture apps from social media companies, banks, and other businesses but for some of those you can run an android emulator or use their website.