So I finally installed GOS on my phone after a year of planning. Phew!
Installation using Fedora
I am running Fedora 40 with Sway WM on ThinkPad P1 Gen 4. This information is important because Fedora is not officially supported. I couldn't make it work using Web USB. Then I found this comment: https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/359-fedora-to-install-grapheneos/4, follow it exactly, and it just works. Be patient, it takes time and there is not much interactive response, so you have to be certain that it succeeded before you disconnect your phone.
First Impression
This is nothing different from anyone else, clean onboarding and very few installed applications. It already had the latest updates. Network reception and performance was working as expected.
Installing Applications
I wanted to retain my ease of use and most of my previous apps, so I installed Google Play Services. It took some time, I was able to install all my applications, including banking. I also use Insular to enable work profile, and I keep all of my intrusive or less used applications there. That also worked well.
Things that went (horribly!) wrong:
I knew that it was going to happen. I read many threads about how to properly restore WhatsApp, and it didn't work. I lost all my WhatsApp chat. One way would be to use the transfer chat feature inside WhatsApp, for that, you need another phone with the latest version of WhatsApp, I did not have one :( and I am still sad about it.
All banking applications worked, except PayTM, it installs fine, but you cannot log in, it requires android system web view. Without login, it is mostly useless. For BHIM UPI, make sure you have given SMS and phone permissions to both BHIM app and Play Services, else it won't autofill the OTP which the only way you can log in into it.
For the apps that have both a Google Play version and F-Droid, you have to be considerate. F-Droid updates are generally slower. But they install faster and you get the usual benefits. Play Store updates are faster but take time to install and may be using Play Services. I may be wrong about this.
Google Home is usable, but I was unable to configure automations. It needs Google Assistant.
Backup
The Seedvault apps kept crashing. I was unable to back up using WebDAV. USB backup worked fine after I disabled “App backup”. Backup requires a lot of improvement to make it reliable and reproducible. I do not have a confidence in it.
Things I loved
Well, obviously the clean look and feel. There is zero bloat and almost zero apps that I have to keep even though I don't use them. Additional security and privacy options are great. I do not use any kind of AI assistant, and it was wonderful not having them on my phone.
I read numerous posts about battery life. Most people said it was better or similar, but not very significant. Moreover, with sandboxed play services, it was worse in numerous instances. My experience is that it has improved significantly. I am getting about 20-30% more screen time. And I am using the phone as usual, also have plenty of apps and using sandboxed Google Play. Additionally, I also have a work profile enabled. Combining all that, I must say it is far better. I have to see if this keeps up in the long term. It has been only 3 days for now.
The ability to control each permission is great. I can finally shut up a few applications.
The work profile now completely stops the apps. AFIR in stock it only pauses apps so that they cannot send notifications and their activities are reduced. But I think they still eat up battery. In GOS they are fully blocked from using any resources.
Things I am missing/want
The first on my list would be a reliable backup. As I pointed out above, I do not have confidence in the current setup.
I would like to remove/replace even the default apps like, contacts, phone, camera etc. They have an outdated UI and there are better replacements available, both FOSS and otherwise. Some preinstalled apps cannot be disabled even.
Some Android 14 features were missing here and there or are outdated. For example, the wallpaper chooser is not the latest. The extreme battery saver feature is missing. I want the battery saver to pause non-essential apps. Focus mode or any kind of digital wellbeing is not present. I understand this might not be a priority for the project, but I just want to point out what I feel.
Getting location was tricky, I couldn't get the default location option to work, which, I believe, is “Reroute location request to OS”, it took too much time and most time I was unable to get location at all. I changed it to play services, now it works, but it is slow and not ideal.
I do not know whether the WhatsApp issue can be resolved from GOS side or not, but I wish it can be fixed.
Please let me know if I can improve a few of my pain points and if I could have done things differently. Thank you, Graphene OS team.