I’m considering changing the OS of my Fairphone 3+ to /e/OS so I’ve been looking into the pros and cons and wanted to get people’s thoughts about it. I’ve also seen good things about Graphene OS, but that appears to be far more catered towards the Pixel line of phones, so I’m not sure it’s right for the Fairphone.
Google Apps on /e/OS
I consider myself as desiring privacy but only to a point - I’m happy with a balance of privacy and convenience as I’m no Edward Snowden. Some Google apps I still use because so far I don’t like the alternatives (like Google Maps and Wallet), others I still need to function on my phone for work purposes (Gmail & Drive).
When I originally looked into it early last year I thought you couldn’t use Google Services at all with /e/OS but that doesn’t appear to be the case - Either I was wrong in the first place about that or there’s been a change since then with v1.0. Can anyone speak from experience how well Google Apps work on /e/OS?
I also travel a lot (and as I recently switched from an iPhone), I love how relatively easy the Google Play store is for switching to different regions for region-specific apps. Is it still fairly easy to do this on /e/OS with their app store?
Murena Cloud Account
Ultimately I personally don’t really care about having the Murena cloud account because I use Tutanota for email and calendar, Notesnook for notes and I’m gradually discovering other app alternatives that work for me, and I don’t really need a cloud account to sync things. but I’d be happy to hear if/how users have benefited from the Murena cloud account. Also I know account is optional, but is there any point switching OS if I’m not bothered about the Murena account? Is it a major selling point of the OS?
/e/OS features I like and problems
So far the features I like about /e/OS is of course the privacy control you get over individual apps, and the app store seems pretty handy with the privacy ratings. however are there any significant compromises/sacrifices or drops in quality of life stuff that people have noticed when they’ve switched to /e/OS?
I’ve read things on the forum like having much worse geolocation, becoming laggy or much worse picture quality after installing /e/OS. Some others say that it’s not all it’s cracked up to be and would be better to use some other privacy-oriented OS. Thoughts?