Does Android AOSP communicate with third-parties?

I'm trying to eliminate all **Google** and **Meta** services from my digital life. (I don't like their policies.) So I thought about buying a new smartphone, removing the pre-installed ROM, and installing Android AOSP without Google **Gapps**. However, the question I would like to ask is whether programmatically, a lot of information from my AOSP smartphone will communicate some information with Google despite not using their services. Is removing Gapps enough, or could something else be done? Is there empirical evidence in the code that confirms this? Considering that for web browsing I would mainly use Mozilla Firefox with DuckDuckGo thus avoiding any Chromium-based browser, and for messaging Telegram downloaded from their Website. (I haven't used WhatsApp for several years.)