i have many older (~2014) androids with replacable batteries and none of them can do it. however you can directly attach power to the battery connector to boot the device without a battery
to me cloning from codeberg is much slower than github and sometimes even fails. i understand it's not possible to have m$ scale server geo balancing and stuff from a nonprofit but yeah. i do try to use it more these days tho.
lineageos is the direct continuation of cyanogenmod since 2016. just grab any android phone that supports lineageos and you're good. microg provides you google services, but it's still dependant on google's servers. i use mine without google services at all, aside from not having push notifications it's very usable.
i've legit seen many people who have no idea what a web browser is, internet == chrome/safari/edge (which opens automatically when clicking a link on some app) for them. this isn't just older people, actually it's usually worse with younger people.
it might depend on the os you used back then (XP or Vista), but probably the other commenter's (ai) response is correct