I have a google pixel, and I know I could install grapheneOS on it. But I’m very, very hesitant, since I depend so much on my phone.
This isn’t like distro hopping, where I feel more comfortable hot swapping ssds, or making partitions, or using my desktop while I tinker with my laptop. My phone has a SIM and the service I depend on can’t be emulated off this phone.
So what do you recommend I do? Should I move my SIM (my phone service, really) to a new phone while I tinker with this one? Can I just blow up the current OS and wing it? Or maybe theres another option that would allow me to bail back to stock android in case something goes wrong. What do you think?
Flashing the stock Pixel ROM back is just as simple as flashing GrapheneOS, the instructions in GOS website are very good for both.
The only two things I can think of that might be issues are banking apps and Google Pay, if you use that. I use Play services in the main profile and honestly there’s not much difference to the stock ROM in terms of user experience. Even Android Auto works nowadays.
For the banking apps, you can have a look at https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/. Just note that if your bank is not on the list, it doesn’t necessarily mean it wont work.