GlytchMeister
Welcome to the party! I was in a similar boat to you recently so I can definitely understand where you’re coming from. I’d say the transition away from using an iPhone for 10+ years is more challenging than anything specific to graphene.
Personally I saw a few major decisions to make initially:
1) use SIM provider traditionally (data and calling and sms) or use sim provider for data only and separate from legacy call/sms provider
2) use google play services or not
3) segment usage into profiles or keep everything on owner
I ended up with the following:
I went with silent.link as my data only esim provider. It’s non-kyc, you can pay with lightning, and has reasonable rates over T-Mobile in the USA.
I am also using Jmp.chat for legacy calls/sms while trying to push the people I speak to the most to use things like signal. The issue I have here is the cost for Jmp.chat is not great if you use a lot of legacy calling (which I have to do for work). Additionally you are paying a few more dollars every month for each number you maintain.
I would actually prefer mysudo pricing model of $100/year for unlimited call/sms and 9 numbers, but there are downsides. Namely that you need google play services to be notified of incoming calls/sms and that they limit service to a handful of countries which is tough as I travel internationally for business frequently. Apparently you can use being a VPN while traveling but there are stories of ppl having accounts shut down (and numbers lost) for violating the location restrictions. Overall I think Jmp.chat fits the graphene open source freedom ethos better than mysudo (private San Francisco based company).
I chose not to use google play services at all on my phone. Well, that’s not entirely true. I had to install the 3 components (none with network access granted) in order to enable privileged esim management, install my silent link esim, and then I immediately uninstalled the 3 google play components.
At least thus far I have kept all of my apps in the owner profile and not enabled multiple profiles as I think the added friction isn’t worth it for my use case. It was tricky enough transitioning from iOS, I didn’t want to make it tougher, at least initially.
In terms of apps to install, here are a couple of links I bookmarked that may help you:
https://brainfucksec.github.io/a-good-privacy-list
https://awesome-privacy.xyz/#/
Oh yeah, Mullvad for vpn is very highly regarded