Its insanely easy, the hardest part is putting the phone into fastboot and installing the USB drivers on windows. Then its just click buttons on the WebUI and pressing the buttons you're told to. The whole process takes about 10 mins.
Check out some YouTube videos on it, its the same process for any pixel (its also the same process for CalyxOS if you want microG)
I've never bothered with alternative launchers, I tired one once and it drained my battery so quick I removed it.
Oh, they are just a bonus, I've not used stock google in years and its just something I didn't like since using the phone.
Plus when it cones to alternative OS, there is only Graphene and Calyx as you can still have a locked bootloader after install.
I like the Spidgen liquid air, I had it on my Pixel 5 and now I have one on my Pixel 8
Yea I was tempted for a second to get it, but there was a comment that it "should" be possible to upgrade to the released version when available, I don't want to have to mess around in the event that it's not. So I'm just going to wait a week or so.
Yea, Google features are very anti privacy, it's funny how it's still one of the most secure phones on the market. I got the pixel 8 for the fact its going to be supported with GrapheneOS, and get 7 years of security updates.
Well, yes, however, installing GrapheneOS may mean not having access to "features" which were part of the marketing for the phone... Which begs the question around what are you paying for? To me, it's like you are paying for a product and also for services. Although the p8 and p8p both have 7 years of support, I wonder if that extends to features and services that are cloud based?
This just strengthens the argument to install privacy/security first operating systems like CalyxOS and GrapheneOS. I don't was a phone that's more a service subscription than it is hardware. I have the pixel 8 and didn't get the pro due to the offloading to Google servers for some "features".
Just waiting for GrapheneOS to be released for the 8... Until then, I'm sitting uncomfortable knowing my phone is uploading telemetry to Google servers...
I've gone with Unraid and consumer level hardware (intel i3 12100 and 16gb of standard ddr4 ram) the only "server hardware" I have, is an LSI HBA card that's in IT mode so I can connect more HDDs.
I'm even used SMR drives in my array, just use a good CMR drive for parity and the biggest SSD you can get for your cache drive and you will be good to go.
I would have likely got the 8A if it came out with the 8 and the pro. I didn't want to wait.
Google pay doesn't work.