There are a lot of suggestions to switch to Graphene right now. I tried Graphene twice for weeks at a time on a Pixel 6 Pro. Here are my observations/thoughts.
* None of my banking apps worked.
* Ended up using Google anyways for maps because the "free" alternatives took me miles out of the way or had no clue where things were.
* I never got the full zoom capabilities of my phone's camera to work, despite installing - you guessed it - Google's camera app.
* Swipe to type might as well have been non-existent.
* RCS never activated despite days of trying - oh, and that required installing Google Messages. Most people in the US still use text.
* There feels like a dearth of FOSS photo galleries with competitive editing features. I ended up installing.... Google Photos.
* Backing stuff up automatically... you going to also self-host NextCloud? Are you going to set up SyncThing? This is not a simple software swap - it requires a whole lifestyle.
I'm a software engineer and competent with Linux, etc... and I felt like I had reduced a $800 phone to the equivalent of something I could buy on prepaid for $150.
I'm sure there was a way to "fix" it - but that's the point. I do this for a living, and I don't have time to fix it. My phone has to work. Period.
You guys realize that basically *nobody* outside of this small echo chamber is willing to deal with that right?
I don't even hate the project - I follow several of the developers and they're fucking *awesome human beings* doing amazing work. Essential work that is needed and used by probably 10's or even 100's of thousands of people with high threat profiles. But almost nobody is going to do this unless they have significant other factors contributing to their threat profile, or they're nerds like us who are willing to tinker for hours to get less than what they get by pulling a stock phone out of a box.
The year of the Graphene Phone will happen at the same exact time the year of the Linux Desktop happens. When it just works. 99% of the time. With no sacrifices in feature set or performance.
