Thing is it is very easy to get a signal account with a fake number, I have 3 different ones. My spare phone don't have a sim or number, but do have signal. On my phone I have one for each profile.
While I am agreeing somewhat, and I haven't been active in the community much. The few encounters I had was in the matrix chat . Yea toxic af . Checked in too see now , scrolled a bit but quite civil atm.
I repair pixel phones as an hobby / side gig and yea not comparable withe fairphone, but still repairable , better than a lot of others but depends on models.
I buy second hand in bulk and repair whats needed. Bonus of no trail to Google as well.
You can choose not to use it at all. My main profile does not and all work fine. Non privacy respecting/ goggle dependent apps I keep in a separate profile.
You can't do that on calyx.
Since play on GOS is toothless , while microG is a hacked up job yea it's better. Microg is ofc amazing , but still a have issues.
Amazing battery life , comparing a new install of calyx and graphene it's a ton of difference. Calyx looks bloated in comparison with graphene. There's basically like 5 apps on a new graphene install. Just running microg takes a lot of stuff to run.
I use calyx on a spare phone, graphene on my regular. Graphene is better security wise, and better privacy wise.
If your device can run graphene is go for it.
Graphene for example are using a sandbox Google play that's not have any special privileges. Which you can choose to use or not. Or use in a separate profile.
Calyx comes with microg from the start. Which still uses proprietary stuff.
Just the hardened malloc and other stuff under the hood on graphene makes it a better option
Regarding email you can use k9 email and set it up with your Gmail.