I have a Pixel 7, stock Android 14. It is my only phone and I love the stock system. But I am trying to gradually ditch Google and its services, for reasons well-known in this community and Lemmy in general. How much would I gain/lose using a custom ROM with/without GApps?
In general, the stability of custom roms and random bugs you encounter may be more than with officially supported operating systems. It might be totally fine, but if you’re the only person who has encountered a random bug and no community dev is interested in fixing it right now, it might stick around for a while.
If it’s your only device and you need it to work, I might recommend trying it out on a secondary device first to make sure it works for what you need.
Philosophically I agree and am aligned with open source and free apps, but the reality is I don’t have the time or patience at this time in my life to deal with that kind of thing. Your calculus might be different though.
Exactly what I am facing right now. I consider myself a privacy-concious person, but there is just no way of getting some things working consistently with open-source ROMs. The only major factor for me is GPay, which has become the only way I pay for things nowadays.
You can put you card in the phone case
My bank doesn’t require a physical card and I don’t have it, checkmate xD