It really comes down to what is your use case. Also, a bit of a mindset change since you have to do a bit more research on some apps yourself, nothing too bad, like checking on the App's Github if they have one, to see issues or bugs. Some of which may apply to you... or not. F-Droid has a link for most apps on their app.

Personally, I removed almost all apps on my phone that have ads and/or improved privacy in one way or another.

I used to use Nova but I found KISS launcher or it's fork TinyBit Launcher much better. Why? Because I do a lot of searches and liked that it is search focused and you can add all types of different searches once you know the proper syntax. From Wikipedia, to Youtube, to Searxng, to Dictionaries or DuckDuckGo, you can add almost all search engines. The app is really, really light on resources and it does what I want it to do.

I dropped all Google products, rooted my phone and removed them off my phone along with Google Play Services. Avoid all apps with any trackers. Albeit I still have a couple that I still need. But it is a great improvement.

Use K9 for mail, OpenVPN in lieu of my VPN provider's app, BraveNewPipe or NewPipe w/Sponsor block for Youtube and other services. Use Mull instead of Firefox, due to being more privacy focused. Eternity for Lemmy, as a, well, Lemmy client.

KDEconnect to send/ping/transfer/control PC's and phones over local Wifi. It's free. Now, I know that many people may not use it, but I set up a Nextcloud Instance on my server and thus have Notes, Maps, RSS reader, File and Bookmarks Sync all through that by using their free apps. All available for free from F-Droid. But you do need a server.

Also, Termux as terminal. You can do lots with it due to all the apps and services you can install and run. I used to run a Searx instance from my phone and I used that to search along with my VPN.

For weather I use either QuickWeather or Geometric Weather, with icons you can get for free from the Playstore.