Hi there!
I switched to grapheneos about a week ago now and so far I have to be honest - I fucking love it. From my old LineageOS phone, this is more stable, infintely more secure and private and I love the community aswell.
Usually I install the default apps like the contacts, dialer, recorder, gallery etc from the simplemobiletools project. I installed them aswell but now that they announced their new phone, basically put ads for it in their apps I don't want to use them anymore. The developer of these apps is also acting shady and I don't want to use their apps anymore.
I was thinking, why don't I install the google apps (so google contacts, google photo's, google recorder) and revoke absolutely all permissions (namely network) and dont login? Can I use these apps privately then? I only have google services framework installed (GSF) - not the play services/store.
Now for my question: would this be a privacy impact? I already do the same with google camera, so why not for the rest?
Thanks in advance and I wish you a happy sunday :-)