Not sure where you got Calyx doing stuff in a "simpler, more vanilla Android manner". It's quite the opposite, actually. CalyxOS bundles a whole bunch of useless third party apps which connect to third party services. If you opt-in to installing microG (which is privileged, not in a sandbox), you aren't avoiding Google in the slightest. You're actually opening yourself up more because of how much of a sloppy interpretation microG is while trying to fill in the role of Google Play services. microG exposed location data to apps, even if the permission was explicitly denied. The developers knew about this for years without doing anything about it.

You're safer using a standard Android phone than using an OS as duct-taped together as CalyxOS.