A very good friend gifted me with his old pixel 7a, and even got graphene on it before sending it.

I have no fucking clue how I would go back to anything else for my main device. I am genuinely antsy for the graphene team to announce whatever brand they're working with because I do hate Google.

But, fuck me, even the 7a on graphene is just so damn nice. Amazing battery life, everything is smooth animation wise, and I get to choose what is on it. It really is what android always should have been (for my preferences, I know it wouldn't be that perfect for everyone). I've had it for months now, and I'm still irrationally angry that it took moving to a degoogled/minimum Google set-up in Google hardware to find a phone so right for me. I'm also rationally angry that there's no sd card slot, but that's a different issue.

So, yeah, I highly recommend graphene if only from a user friendliness perspective.