google is a prison and the enemy of FOSS, we really need an alternative

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/40230491

Blåhaj Lemmy - Choose Your Interface

So what’s the user experience like on an alternative OS?
Graphene has been great for me.
Yeah but what’s it like?
Its like using Android.
Can you use the play store? Can you install apks from github? Can you use launchers?
Yes.
Cool, thanks
The only thing that was not working as well for me was GPS, but that was probably my own fault, i maybe misconfigured something.
You have to configure gps?
No, but it might not be as good as one might expect out of the box. In most implementations of gps, location accuracy and latency is helped with additional methods, like your phone using its distance to various cell towers to figure out where it is. Features like this can come with privacy issues, which for Graphene is a higher priority issue than slightly worse navigation. You can of course go into location settings and enable all that, just make sure to read the added disclaimers as they go into more detail.
Thanks for the explanation!
Can you use banking apps, Google wallet, Google pay (or other NFC payments)?

I could use banking apps yes, there is a resource on the grapheneOS forums.

Wallet, pay are not working, iirc. Don’t use graphene anymore since i don’t have a pixel anymore