Grapheneos has some unique features that simply no other mobile OS has. It is insane solid for security, but that does not make it lose anything in terms of privacy.
Starting with the fact that it comes with only the bare minimum of apps necessary for a functional mobile device (anything else you have to find, choose and install yourself).
Without digging too deep into the technical details of the software itself, the first "shit, I love this” factor for me begins with the storage scope and contacts scope. This is one thing I’m not willing to live without anymore. Pretty much every app, proprietary or otherwise, will ask for access to storage. With scopes you can provide access to a folder of your choice,even create a folder for each app if you want, effectively blocking every other app from potentially snooping into other apps storage.
The same holds true for contacts. Signal (Molly in my case) asks for access to contacts, but I have no need for that, as everyone I talk with over Signal is already there. But if someone new comes around, I give Molly access to that one contact and add them to Molly. My jmp.chat runs on Cheogram, and I only use it for my US and Canada contacts, so I don’t have to provide Cheogram access to anyone outside North America. Same thing with my VOIP service for work and so on.
The level of granularity achieved on permissions is just epic. I even tried to use stock pixel 4 days ago, kept it for 3 days, and had to roll back to Graphene last night because I couldn’t stand the constant nagging on the phone (and I disabled everything Google in it except the Play Store, for which I did disable everything but network).
I have no respect for Micay and his band of narcissistic developers with a god complex, but that doesn’t remove the fact that GrapheneOS is light years ahead of any mobile OS out there in terms of user control for privacy.
Correction, the developers, not the community, are flat out pricks (not “slightly unfriendly”), but this does nothing to remove how amazing the OS is for anyone wanting to remove themselves from all the mainstream garbage in the mobile devices scenario while being able to keep productivity with a few workarounds.
You will see me speak about Grapheme as if it was the Holly grail of mobile OSs, and that is because I actually move between CalyxOS, stock android, grapheme and Lineage every few months, and the fact remains that you have less than half of the control on your privacy you can get on anything other than Graphene. Additionally, show me one mobile OS that has less bloat then Graphene.
Every time I see posts slamming GrapheneOS over the toxic community (which it is not) or the devs (who are extremely toxic in my opinion), all I see is butthurt overly a sensitive individuals that are looking at the wrong thing. GrapheneOS is what Android should be, it’s that simple. All these rants about how toxic x or y is only serves to keep people starting in the privacy or security (or both) path away from what is effectively a huge leap from being invaded and helpless in the current tech and surveillance scenario to having near-complete control over their digital lives.