Hello fellow GrapheneOS users,

I have been doing a fair bit of research over the past few months on degoogling and how to do that and I have finally obtained myself a Pixel 9a and installed GrapheneOS on it. I loved the learning and challenges that came with the process and have ended up doing a factory reset to start a fresh due to multiple reasons, which I am about to get to below.

First off, I want to say that I have been pretty firmly plugged into the matrix (google) and rely on a lot of the services that they provide - I use two gmail accounts - a main one for work/banking/life/shopping and a 'gaming/nonserious' one and pretty much all of my accounts anywhere on the web are registered to these. I also have two sim cards - one from the country where I live and one from my home country and the numbers are linked to the two google accounts. I also use google drive for two sheets (no way for them to work offline or outside of google sheets, unfortunately), and also use a lot of mobile banking apps (about half are GOS compatible and the other half, unfortunately aren't), not to mention the password manager. Pretty much all of my digital life/finance/communication depends on having access to either my gmail account or to my phone number or both.

Before I get thrown the 'what is your threat model' question, My goal is to not have ALL of the actions I take on my phone, all of the content I browse, and all of the conversations I have around my phone be permanently analyzed and fed to google or any other AI, marketing or engagement algorithm, and I am pretty sure I am not alone in that regard. I am open to trying out other mail providers, but I will still rely on google drive, banking, whatsapp, messenger, and telegram. These, unfortunately require me to use the playstore, my current phone numbers and my current gmail addresses. It will be a pretty big ask (and in some cases downright impossible) for me to do my banking online, as most physical branches are closing down in the country where I live, and some of the banks are app only (and require the PlayStore installed) and also - all of my friends and family are on whatsapp/messenger/telegram and will not consider moving platforms.

I was thinking of keeping my old phone to access the banking apps that I can't access on GOS and for some Google use. If I create a separate user profile for banking/messaging and another for chats/google will my activity be at least separated per persona? Apart from the banking apps, most of which can be logged into with just the phone number or bank info, the chat/voice call apps all require that I back-up my history from google drive and require my phone number. At this point, here comes the first question:

1. Given the above info, is there any benefit to sticking with GOS just to separate 'some' of my banking activity and general browsing from my other google usage if I am still going to have to login to my main google account on the phone?

Now, assuming that the answer to the above question is yes, then I have seen two approaches:
a. Install google play services only on the user profiles that need them and not on the other ones
b. Install google play services on main profile, install apps and push to user profiles (pushing google play services if required).

I understand that b. has the advantage over a. when ALL apps on a user profile don't require google play services. I can create a 'dummy' account to download the apps on owner profile, then push them to specific user profiles and not log in. However, for the chats and/or gmail profile, I will need to log in to my main google account.

2. Given the above, should I even bother creating the dummy google account to download the apps?

3. Moreover, one of the banking apps is compatible with GOS, but will only work on the Owner profile. Do I even bother with user profiles if that is the case?

Now, onto the issues I experienced before doing the factory reset and starting afresh.

I use two sims, as stated above, but the pixel has only one sim slot. This means one of the sims has to be an esim. This is currently an issue and is likely on the side of my carrier, as the esim is currently stuck in activation mode and I have reset the phone. Prior to that, though I had issues with the physical sim inserted, and me failing to receive texts with confirmation codes outside of my main profile. I also had issues receiving texts from certain contacts, which I deliberately prompted to send me texts to test how it would work. Some of the texts were getting through, some were stuck on 'not delivered' on their side (tried on Owner profile and other user profiles). The people I couldn't receive texts from, could receive texts from me, though. At a point prior to experimenting with the texts I had turned on the option for that user profile to send/receive calls and texts.

4. Is that a known issue with GrapheneOS or was it some funny setting that I hadn't toggled on or permission to some app that I hadn't given?

I also had this issue, where I had stored all my contacts onto one of the physical sims and when I inserted it into the phone, the contacts weren't showing up. I had to manually export them from my old phone to my pc, then plug Pixel into PC to transfer. Then, they could be imported.

5. Does this sound like a network setting/sim carrier issue and is that normal or a glitch?

I had a huge issue with Telegram, and Telegram X, where I got locked out of being able to send a confirmation code for 10 hours, as I kept trying and the text never came through on the sim that was physically inserted. Research yielded various suggestions, none of which worked - try to give permissions to call logs, calls, texts to both Telegram and Google Play/Play Services, try Telegram X, try receiving text on another device, etc.:

6. Where was I going wrong there?