I've been quite happy with the AnkerWork S600[1], which I bought a couple years ago through Kickstarter. I don't know if it's the same chip, but they advertise a "professional NPU", and I find the voiceprint-based ambient sound rejection works very well. I can literally have my crying child in my lap and the other side of the phone call can't hear him.
I left Google to spend a year cycling with my partner from Alaska to Argentina, and couldn't recommend it more highly.
I strongly agree with other comments about having some structure/mission to your experience. I'm sure the need for it varies from person to person, but I know that I would have gone crazy or felt guilty for wasting my time if we had just been hanging out and drifting from one tourist hotspot to another, as seems to be popular on e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gringo_Trail.
Having a theme or purpose, even if it's totally arbitrary (like "let's go from the top of the Americas to the bottom, by bike!") was definitely important to me to maintaining a positive mindset and achieving a satisfying experience.
Right now, everyone in public health is 100% focused on solutions that can deliver results. If we can demonstrate effectiveness with a system that is privacy-first, it'll be all the more difficult to push a system that's collecting data just for the sake of it.
We're taking an approach that empowers individuals to take their data out of big tech companies and contribute it directly to their local healthcare providers and public health agencies: https://www.covidcontacttracing.com/.
This approach is highly practical -- the penetration (location history in Android, Google Maps) is already there, and we've already built out a set of tools around it to deliver insights to first-responders, epidemiologists and doctors, while ensuring individual privacy.
I think the only way to do effective contact tracing while respecting individual privacy and agency is to put the user in control of the data, and make sure that any data transfer is done with consent and deliberation.
I'm surprised that there isn't more discussion of leveraging the extensive location data that Google already routinely collects via Android and Google Maps mobile apps.
I'd love any feedback on this simple proposal for a way to enable individuals to contribute their Google location history data to health care organizations: http://covidcontacttracing.com.
This uses public Google APIs and Google Takeout to get raw gps data and inferred semantic locations from Google to COVID-19 response organizations. I've got a prototype that's essentially ready to deploy if anyone has suggestions for potential partners.
I think the Google/Apple proposal is very promising, but I don't see any reason not to also put existing data to work on this problem.
[1] https://us.ankerwork.com/pages/a3319-s600-all-in-one-speaker...