Well it's open source android, if the code is bad, it's jettisoned. While I cannot stand Google, not every line of code they write is trash.

The sandbox is good and you do not need to install Play if you do not want to. I use f droid where possible.

I want Linux Mobile but it is not ready yet. In the mean time, this is the best we have.

if you have a pixel theres absolutely no reason why you shouldnt use it.

if you dont i dont think its worth to buy one just for graphene

I have been using GrapheneOS on a Pixel 7 Pro for 3 months now. I am BLOWN AWAY at how good it is. I have 3 user profiles. Main profile has no google services at all, and 95% of my apps are running there. Then I have a second user I can switch to that has sandboxed google services and my banking apps on it. I then have a third user that also has sandboxed google services running where I can install any random app that demands google services. (I have only 1 app on that user) . So 99.9% of the time my phone is running with no google services at all. (Side note: without even the sandboxed google services installed, apps need to be left open in the app switcher in order to receive notifications. If you swipe all your apps away, then you won't receive notifications. This is not a problem for me, as I just keep my messaging apps open in the app switcher. But if it is a problem for you, you would need to run the sandboxed google services).

I see GrapheneOS as a way of removing 99% of all the tracking, spyware and things that I dont like, while still having the convenience of having all the apps and features that are available on a regular smartphone.

There is a learning curve, and many settings to learn and customize. But definitely worth it.

To get a Pixel, instead of paying £900 for a new pixel 8 pro, I paid £300 for a second hand Pixel 7 Pro on eBay that was in perfect condition. So for £300 I now have a privacy phone and an AMAZING camera, which was very important for me the camera.

GrapheneOS has something in store for everyone. The fully de-googled setup by the common definition a lot of people strive for is a fully supported configuration, it comes that way out of the box in fact, making zero connections to Google - unlike many other operating systems. But you can also transform it into a more "regular" phone by installing Google Play and all the bells and whistles and enjoy the benefits while still feeling save, thanks to the app sandbox applying to it. So you can take away its permissions and feel rest assured it can't snoop on you even if it wanted to. Or you take a middleground somewhere inbetween if that's your cup of tea; functionality is an important factor for many, and there's little you need to sacrifice.

Did you try reading through the FAQ?

I've been using GrapheneOS for over a year. I cannot complain about it, it works as advertised and it does it the best way possible. However, here's the list of things I find annoying/missing. Keep in mind, this is a subjective list.

• some (quite a lot of for me) apps require Google Play Framework (or whatever the name is) to work properly
• Aurora store tends to be unavailable randomly, which makes installation/updates difficult sometimes
• some features are wonky, e.g. GrapheneOS has no issues with disabling wifi when leaving my home but I was never able to enable wifi when I'm back home.
• default apps work ok-ish but it's far from good old iOS/Android experience
• Android Auto experience was a shitshow for me

It's a middleground between a regular stock spyware ROM and a degoogled one with pretty good security thanks to lockable bootloader.

P. S. I can hear the drama coming unfortunately. This ROM's devs have haters.

Not much to comment on the technical side, but quite a bit of things get upstreamed or reported from GrapheneOS. I believe they really know what they're doing. You can ignore the rest if you don't care for the general opinion.

Yes, there's probably Google code in the sandbox feature, it's basically the stock Android userland app sandbox. The magic is the compatibility layer that allows Google apps to run as regular userland apps.

Louis Rossman got threatened by the GrapheneOS dev

I used it for quite a while, but with most of the Google apps. One morning RCS chat stopped working and would not reconnect, since I use RCS for texting most people I'm back on stock for now. I know it's not graphenes fault, but I didn't want to have to keep dealing with Google randomly disabling stuff. Up until then, everything worked as it was described