I've been running it for a couple of days now and I'm completely in love with it.
Only serious downside is that my stupid US bank app doesn't have NFC payments, only Evil Pay (both Apple and Google).
Discussion
Banking apps are the worst. Cash, card or just use their website, or even better, lightning gift cards almost all services have that, and those that don't do accept cash 😛
I argue that direct NFC payment provided by my Spanish bank is equally (not) private as by card, and a lot more convenient. I understand I am giving all that data to the bank.
The point here is to avoid Evil Corp *also* snooping in to collect and cross the data with all the other data they collect, and sell it.
Cash has none of those downsides obviously. But I no longer feel safe using ATMs and carrying a wad on me where I live. Also, it can be really frustrating if you carry little and for some reason need more. ATMs are becoming ever scarcer where I live, and an absolute rarity in some towns.
Using BTC is simply out of the question.
Do these apps give you an error? Sometimes you need Google play services, which graphene is great at running in a containerized environment.
No error. They just won't let me put my card into a n NFC wallet that isn't Evil Pay, and you can't pay using NFC from the app either.
The one that works provides its own NFC wallet, so I don't need to use Evil Pay.
To be clear, it's just a small inconvenience. I can just tap my card instead of my phone.
And the reality is that I'm thinking about setting up a two-device system with the SIM-less GOS device tethered to a lock-down mode iPhone. So I can simply use the iPhone of required, really.
I still have an iphone as well, problem is I use it so less frequently it keeps turning off, and then there those times where I need it for something and I have to charge it and wait for it to turn on 😅
I carried an iPhone and an Android device for years and it was a pain in the ass, so I finally picked one and have been doing that for the past two or three years. But now with GrapheneOS working so well, I'm going to go back to a healthy separation of Church and State mode if you know what I mean. It really is worth it.