But beyond whether the OS is good or not, "fuck you, I've got mine" is not only sad as a position in general, it is also a bad tactical choice, because over long enough timeframes you can't assure that you can keep yours if others are deprived.
I don't think the parent was saying that.
My opinion is that it is actually the real fight: it should be mandatory for manufacturers to make it possible to have an alternative OS (which includes allowing to unlock/relock the bootloader and add custom signing keys) and it should be mandatory for big companies (e.g. banks) to not ban those alternative OSes with Play Integrity or whatever goddamn checks they make.
Fighting about what Google does on the Google flavour of AOSP is a distraction, IMO.
Graphene (or anything else) will only stay a useful option if a whole lot more people use it so that government agencies and banks can't ignore that many people. A whole lot more people need to feel they aren't completely alone if they thought about using it, that it's actually a real option and not a kooky crap option.
Right now agencies & companies can totally ignore them all, and everything that still works today is just luck.
I haven't used Graphene myself. At the moment I have a stock rom that's merely rooted using the official manufacturer supplied bootloader unlock, and my small local credit union bank apps work, and the LG app that controls my air conditioners and microwave does not. Even if the bank apps didn't work it wouldn't matter because they have working web sites, and I never wanted an an app for my appliances in the first place.
But any day that could change.
It's just luck the banks have web sites that work in firefox on linux, and just luck there are no functions I need on those appliances that require the app.
Borrowed time. I hope not, but that's the prevailing feeling.
I'm no slouch either, I've developed for android for almost a decade.
I'm not disagreeing with ya, just adding a comment so folks are aware that the "Graphene just works" crowd is sometimes a bit hyperbolic.
After that? I only had one application fail due to Graphene's memory allocator. No weird bugs, no need to restart like some siblings are commenting. As close to the "Graphene just works" as it could be.
However, I'm not heavy into Google's ecosystem. Google Pay will not work but I'm not a user, some Google features won't tell you why they don't work but I'm not using them either (Quick Share for instance), none of my apps require the highest Play Integrity level. Maybe the person who say this are a specific type of person where use-cases don't overlap with what breaks on Graphene.
Firefox + stock keyboard stopped properly working three days ago, it's back to normal now. No idea what that was about. Restarting was the only way I found to get things working again during that period.
While on the stock Android keyboard, it is clear that the Google one is much better at correcting my taps than the stock one. My typo count has gone up significantly.
Every several weeks the mobile connectivity stops working and nothing short of a restart will get it working again. This might be a bad interaction of the very weird way Google Fi works with a secondary user account.
I've encountered one case of the phone shutting itself off to install an update overnight and not turning on, making me miss my morning alarm.
In the US, there's no way to side step the lack of tap to pay.
Getting apps to work with Android Auto requires some finessing.
These are the things I've encountered in the last 2 months of using Graphene.
Aside from all of that, I really like everything else about the OS. As it stands, it does lacks polish when straying outside of the common path. Not using a secondary account, nor Google Fi on an eSIM, and using the stock browser would likely improve my experience significantly.
I haven't encountered an app that wouldn't work yet (but have installed play services as I do want to use Android Auto).
I would still recommend Grapheme for normal-ish users, as long as you don't go "paranoid mode" with secondary accounts and skipping play services or don't want to use the phone for tons of things beyond phone calls and web browsing. The base experience is that much calmer than stock Android on Pixel.
I don't use RCS and Android Auto.
I have HeliBoard to replace Stock/Google Keyboard. It is way ahead the stock keyboard experience but far behind Google Keyboard's, especially when writing in two languages.
Tap-to-pay works with my bank apps. But that means I can only use one card unlike with GPay.
I rarely use second account as the latency to switch from one account to the other is a pain. I only have a secondary sending notifications to the first one.
I don't let the phone auto-reboot for installs, I let it install automatically and click reboot when I want it to install.
I am on a physical SIM / different carrier and never encountered network issues so I can't comment on that one.
(idle interest; I use Graphene, but few apps, and everything worked so far)
It helps, but your modems are still closed chipsets you have no ability to control constantly in communication with and controlled by third parties who can execute code on your hardware at any time without your notice or consent.
I really hated my Pixel 7 Pro, but I think that was bad hardware and not Android's fault, and since buying my iPhone 13 I have bought my Thinkpad and have been unbelievably impressed with Lenovo hardware (especially since the last Android phone that I bought that I actually liked was my Moto X3).
It would be great if Graphene ends up getting support from at least one first party, because at that point I think there's at least a chance it won't screw with banking apps and the like.
It's quite problematic that someone can currently upload a package name belonging to another organization to the Play Store and that should have been stopped years ago since it was used in many cases for scamming and squatting on package names clearly belonging to others. Package names are meant to start with a reverse domain belonging to the owner such as app.grapheneos for our grapheneos.app domain. They could enforce this based on domains authorizing usage without enforcing ID verification and that's what we would have proposed.
This is one of the ways F-Droid has ignored standard best practices including security practices in a way that's already causing problems but is now a massive issue for them. If they had started doing things properly many years ago when it was first brought up, then they'd be in a much better situation today. They're going to need to deal with this by renaming all their package names to org.fdroid. to avoid issues with the proposed changes. This is problematic because existing users will stop getting updates. It's better to use a prefix than a suffix where a developer could end up changing their mind about whether it makes sense resulting in conflict over the name, which is fair since they still own it if it's their reverse domain.
Dating… well, the goal for most people is to exit the dating pool anyway.
Social media is bad.
Many countries have only three or four full banks (the kind that can give you a Visa or Mastercard bank card, let you send and receive transfers, etc.), and all of them are making the same moves.
Messaging apps will continue working.
Banking apps made by reasonable companies will also. In days of banking being competitive and rather open with many providers offering good value, it's so easy to switch providers. Granted I am relatively poor and keep my banking simple, but I doubt card providers want to increase friction either. After Revolut started requiring >basic integrity it took me appx 1 day to switch to n26 and nothing of value was lost.
Not being able to use socialmedia, e-commerce, and dating apps sounds great.