[yellowapple]

I used CopperheadOS (without GApps) on a Nexus 6P as my daily driver for almost 2 years. Very few "mainstream" apps worked; they would loudly complain about the lack of Google Play Services, and at best would lose functionality (e.g. Slack, which apparently relies on Play Services for notifications) or at worst would crash either immediately or within a few minutes after launch (multiple reasonably-popular online dating apps had this problem).

In short, of the apps I tried that weren't distributed via F-Droid, most of them suffered from varying degrees of brokenness without Google Play Services (and these same apps work fine on my HTC One M8 and my current-daily-driver OnePlus 5T, both of which run LineageOS w/ GApps).

You're right, though, that "some Android apps work fine" is a better situation than "no Android apps work at all". Hopefully GrapheneOS can leverage that advantage well. It'd just be useful to acknowledge that it ain't all sunshine and rainbows just because it's AOSP-based; whether it's microG or something that ain't a security landmine waiting to blow off someone's leg, addressing that issue with an alternative service provider would be a game-changer, and would readily address the one issue I ever had with CopperheadOS (and - it seems - likely would still have with GrapheneOS).