| It's all I've ever used. I think it works great but I think your experience will depend heavily on your expectations. I don't use any proprietary apps and only install them from fdroid or build them myself. But if you do, you're going to have a different experience. Let's say you want to run Whatsapp. From what I can tell you basically have three options: 1) Install google apps. When you install your rom you will also download a gapps bundle and install it. This will be a very vanilla android experience but with the ability to uninstall whatever you want, root, etc. You can open the play store and install Whatsapp. Everything should work OOTB. However you're running all of the google service including google play services, so privacy-wise this is not significantly different than stock android. 2) Install microg When you install your rom you can also install microg. This is an install time option in Calyxos. Microg replaces many of the google apis. You can install Whatsapp through Aurora store, which can install apps from the play store. Whatsapp will use the microg FCM implementation. FCM is google's notification service. It allows your phone to make a single persistent connection to receive notifications, allowing for better battery efficiency b/c you don't have many apps activating the radio. FCM just communicates that an app has a notification, it doesn't carry the contents of the message. Unlike play services, microg registers the FCM connection with an anonymous. So google knows your device is running whatsapp and when you get notifications, but not what they are. 3) No gapps / no microg Don't do either of the above. You won't get push notifications with whatsapp. Many free/libre apps have alternative notification schemes involving separate persistent connections. This is less power efficient but works without involving google. I use Signal and Element like this and my battery still lasts >24 hours. Several developments |