They are working on their “own” phone which should alleviate a fair number of concerns with what Google might be doing to sabotage them.

Yes, please. The more users we have on Graphene the harder we are to ignore as a user base.

You can function in today’s society just fine, it’s just less convenient.

But the problem here is not only that you need a smartphone to begin with, but also one specifically from either Google or Apple. Having something else (like a phone with Sailfish or GrapheneOS or any other custom rom) also doesn’t work.