Almost anything that wants to send push messages to an android device without their app draining battery uses google servers, so you are a bit stuck here. Setting up MicroG can be a bit of a pain, and I can't really remember what I did to get it completely setup but once it's set up, it's solid.

It is possible as with any custom “rom” to install the Gapps package, sign into a google account and everything work, but that's not my style. I use LineageOS which is the successor to CyanogenMod which stopped being so open when they became a company and there was drama. I persevered and continued 2 weeks later. Yep, you read that right, they force a wait of 2 weeks to basically attempt to get you to use the phone the way they want you to. To unlock the phone required me to buy the phone, attach it to my PC, request unlock code, then put it back in it's box for 2 weeks. Poco is a sub-company of Xiaomi but it's easier to unlock them than some Xiaomi devices because they're a smaller company.

I run a Poco 5G and this took some research as most handset manufacturers are refusing to unlock bootloaders and I want a relatively modern experience, not a slow ancient (in phone terms) device. What prompted this ironically was a time where I actually did have an issue, but the fact that it is so rare is worthy of note, so have a note! First, the hardware Recently I was asked about my android phone setup where I don't have Google Play and yet seem to have no real issues with life without the Big G.

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