iPhone Backup - really necessary?

Hey everyone!

I have my iPhone and iPad backups on my iCloud for a few years now. What i find annoying is that the iPhone (12 mini/ iOS 14.5) backup is way to big with over 14 gb. Over the years it got somehow bigger and bigger. Now I had the thought to not use the iCloud iPhone backup and have a question before I decide to: what does the backup include?

Data for Calender, notes, contacts, messages etc. are separately synched through iCloud with my devices, same with photos. My files are on iCloud Drive, not on the internal iPhone storage. Most of my third party apps are not included in my iCloud backup (data saved on particular accounts, account’s login data saved in keychain), the few other apps also synch with iCloud separately, e.g. notability and tayasui sketches.

So what is “the rest”? What remains in the iCloud backup in my case? The only things I can think of right now are iPhone settings and app and widget organization on the Home Screen.

Apart from the fact that this stuff should not take 14 gb of storage, I guess I don’t need a backup since my content is backed up. In my understanding, without a iPhone iCloud backup, I would have to login with my Apple ID, download and arrange all apps on my own and go through the iPhone settings to get back to my up-to-date iPhone status after a problem. This would take like 30 minutes or so which I would be totally ok with.

Did I forget about something? Does this sound kind of reasonable? I would appreciate your comments and thoughts on it.