If you have any intent to play with Android OS variants or the stock OS, don't buy Verizon devices. Ever. They will not give you the decryption key or unlock key.
Apple, Google, Samsung and Motorola all sell devices on their websites as full price or up to 36 month financing. You can get them carrier unlocked. Motorola and Google offer bootloader unlocking should you want to.
Buy an unlocked one from box box stores. Bought mine from best buy. Immediately threw GrapheneOS on it. Coming from a locked down Samsung s9 that I couldn't root to an degoogled android experience I didn't even have to root is fucking awesome!
Carrier unlock and bootloader unlock are very different things.
All my 60x motorola Z phones can use any carrier
Well, they could if I hadn't replaced the antenna with a dummy resistor but that's beside the point.
The point is I cannot have administrative access to my phone and that means I cannot change something I really really need to change on them to make them useful for my purpose.
Essentially, I cannot "sudo" on these phones and that's making them very difficult to use.
When I moved from Verizon to ATT on my phone, all the Verizon crap disappeared as soon as Verizon released the device. ATT then pushed an OTA that put all their bullshit a day or so later of course, but there was a window they're when I probably could've gotten more access.