GOS creates a complete bunker of a phone that can provide defense against pretty much all but the most dedicated state level actors. If you're worried that someone would steal your phone specifically to target you, Graphene will protect against that. Securitywise it's hard to argue against them, although GOS tends to sacrifice usability in favor of security, which leads to odd decisions. Their device depreciation timeline is also pretty aggressive and really just matches that of the Pixel. (You're also buying the Google phone... to not want Google in your life; this bizarre paradox will always be strange). It's not exactly a recommendation for long-term support. Worth noting however is that usage of GOS is also seen as a signal in and of itself for the authorities that you may have something unsavory to hide, so using it stands out in that regard; some law enforcement officers (I think it was in Spain?) have said that the OS is popular with organized crime. GOS obviously denies the connection and they're probably honest in that the OS isn't deliberately designed for criminals, but it's worth noting at the very least. (Basically GOS is the paradox where someone trying their hardest to be anonymous ends up standing out way too much from the crowd and drawing attention to themselves.)

/e/OS (and similar "non-LineageOS" ROMs really) instead focus more on de-Googling. They're still generally security focused, but the priority is less "someone's after you" and more "corporate surveillance is kinda scary innit". The aim is less to avoid someone actively trying to drain your phone of data and more to prevent your phone from passively sending everything it can possibly find to the Big G's ad machine (as well as whatever other trackers get snuck into apps.) Because of this, they usually have better depreciation timelines and support a lot more devices compared to GOS who only support the Pixel line (which is an increasingly awful set of phones truth be told); their scope is much smaller.

Finally, it's worth noting that the GOS community is absurdly toxic to anyone doing anything privacy-related that isn't under the banner of GOS. It's extremely maximalist, tends to get very upset at other projects whenever they get attention (see sibling reply to this, where they pretty much melted down because an outlet dared to recommend a Fair phone+/e/OS) and the projects official channels have generally encouraged this sort of behavior. It doesn't really damage the software itself, but it's worth considering.

I have been a user of /e/OS for 5 years, and also of GOS and would like to share my opinion on this:

> it's worth noting that the GOS community is absurdly toxic to anyone doing anything privacy-related that isn't under the banner of GOS

What I have seen (and I am not involved in any of those projects) is that GOS does care a lot about security, has a higher quality in that regard than anything else, and tends to be blunt about "inferior" projects communicating about security.

Not that they couldn't improve their communication style, but usually when they call out technical limitations of other projects (e.g. /e/OS), they are right. And I mean the technical arguments. Then I have seen a bunch of drama, but to be fair I have seen those other communities show toxic behaviour towards GOS just as much as the opposite.

It feels like it is GOS vs "the others", because the others don't criticise each other, and GOS bluntly criticises when they see claims they find are wrong (I have seen claims by /e/OS going from misleading to downright wrong).

On my particular phone, after 5 years with /e/OS, the Fairphone updates were outdated by 4 years. In terms of security I would have been better with the Stock Android. It depends on the phone of course, because /e/OS tends to claim that they support everything and they just can't. Even on a phone that /e/OS supports well, GrapheneOS is superior, period.

But I agree, I could do without all the drama. I guess my point is that it goes both ways.