Yes that is ironic. As someone else said, Google made the best de-Google-able phone. But from what I gather they chose it because of the specific hardware features and they need to restrict what they support to keep the project manageable and maintainable.

I bought mine outright and wiped the Pixel version of Android and am pretty happy. To be clear, I wasn't trying to avoid giving Google money ... I just wanted a phone and operating system that I felt like I had control of, without having a ton of bloatware and spyware pre-installed by the vendor etc.

And a recent one that is. Almost as funny as having to buy a macbook to run linux.....

Yup - Google made the best de-googleable phone.

They did and I bought a used pixel6 just to switch to graphene. The problem is that the next pixel will likely be much more difficult to do this with because google is going to not not be evil.

The Pixel 7 is also supported by Graphene OS.

I meant the next one to come out. The 7 was already out when I got my 6.

I trust Google's incentives to have secure hardware as much as I trust them to have disrespectful software (privacy).

> you needed a Google Pixel to run it

That's correct. It's my understanding that this is for two reasons:

1) google opened api/support for verified boot on the pixels (so you can tell if a border agent hacked your grapheneos phone, for example)

2) it's easier to support fewer phone models (given they are not a large team)

I bought a refurbished pixel 3a last year for a little over $100 and have been thrilled with my grapheneos experience. I don't run google play, but it is my understanding this can be done in a sandbox (allowing for more privacy than usual).