Almost everything just works after installing sandboxed Google Play Services. For a few apps you have to tweak a setting to turn off some of GrapheneOS's exploit protections. But I've found very few that refuse to run, and nothing indispensable. If you don't like your main profile having Play Services you can set them up under a second profile or a private area and keep the apps that use them away from your main profile.

Some bank apps may not work, but you can check by searching for you bank name + GrapheneOS

I've had zero apps not work, including my banking apps.

I switched a few months ago and overall its been an excellent experience. Some pitfalls though:

1. Banking apps may not work, Santander in the UK for example but I'm going to transfer away from them
2. Contactless pay through google wallet doesn't work, I couldn't find a way to attach a card to the back of my phone and also keep pixel snap usable so I bought a small pixel snap wallet that works nicely
3. Recently Volkswagen and vw group enabled google play attestation for their app and not hardware attestation, so my cars app no longer works. This is probably the most frustrating for me because as an EV owner there's no other way to track the charge of your car other than via the app. This is particularly annoying when using public charge points and you can't track the charge progress when walking away from the car. First world problem, I can just leave it alone and let it charge without keeping an eye on it but that's annoying to me, I'm sure I'll get over it.
4. Because of the above, I'm concerned other apps may start to follow suit. For example "too good to go" in the UK is "not compatible" with my device from the play store because it doesn't pass the play attestation... Hopefully it's not a trend.

Overall though I would highly recommend. All the other main features work flawlessly.

Amazing for me tbh. I only had to give up contactless payment since my bank switched to google wallet and I have 0 google apps on my phone. Obtanium and Aurora store are life savers.

I am yet to find any app that doesn't work.

It's probably illegal in Germany and some other EU countries. Not that that always stops Big Tech. But this one, at least in Germany, could land the user some jail time.

No, I gave it to the person who resold the phone at a lower cost than what I would've paid to get it from Don't Be Evil Inc.

What a useless and irrelevant comment that adds less than nothing to the conversation.

Technology divergence is inevitable after corporations saw that convergence into an “all in one device” made their work much simpler.

No surprise feature phones, MP3 players and dedicated-use devices are making a comeback. My wish is for full pocket computers to return.

I'm going off memory here, but I think this was an issue way back with some phones having DAC hardware built in, and others skipping that hardware in exchange for requiring dongles that included such?

Maybe you just need to find a new dongle? Hopefully that helps and sorry if it doesn't, but I'd rather just have a headphone jack back and skip all the complications...

They don't always work good. I've tried many even Apple versions. It's finicky somewhat for the audio to pickup like in a car with an aux to the adapter to phone usbc. They do work. Just not perfect. Still prefer 3.5mm jacks and wired headphones. Wireless junk has almost always been a scam to me. Batteries and bluetooth wear out.

I didn't check the actual law, always a good idea to do so.

So, §201 StGB actually covers both, it is forbidden to "aufnehmen" (record) as well as "mithören" (spy on). Bonus, its forbidden to cite transcription (im Wortlaut mitteilen).

Its an old law, going back to video cameras with magnetic tape and actually tapping a phone line. So it was used quite often, including the mentioned fake surveillance cameras, that didn't record or even view anything but seemed to the public they did.

When dashcams became a thing people would be sentenced for using them. These days you can use dashcams, but never save for more than 24h or show the recording to anyone but the police/court.

I guess the law is a relict of living next door to Stasi, but its really just a guess of mine.

No need to, there is no fruit of the poisonous tree in German law. Police can strip search you in bright daylight on a crowded square for no reason - clearly illegal, bit what they find will be used to proscute you. The officers will be punished as well, at most with a stern talking to.

Im a perfect world, as they claim, its a secondary system listening that isn't recording or transmitting anything, and is meant to be low power. If it hears the wake up word, it wakes up the other mic and starts recording.

Thats how they claim the smart speakers work anyway.

This would be different.