Instead of Gboard, get Anysoft keyboard from https://f-droid.org, enable Gestures in the settings. You'll thank me later. Also, F-Droid has different keyboard layouts for Ansyoft such as better ones for SSH and OFC language related layouts.

Futo Keyboard.

https://keyboard.futo.org/

Holy... What kinda heavy lifting is Google Play Services doing with those 1330 megs?

Dunno but my userdata for play services is 623MB.