This was pretty much my impression of /e/ as well. Used it only briefly. It ran poorly, had a bunch of crap I didn't want. Bad launcher. Things didn't work properly. Overall impression I got was that the people who make /e/ do not know what they are doing. While the GrapheneOS dev comes across as sus and toxic to me, part of me would like to give it a try. But between Pixel phones *still* having black screen of death problems, and newer ones lacking a headphone jack - I found a Moto G100 plus LineageOS with MicroG is a great option. I only run open software on it, and keep everything proprietary on my old un-degooglable phone that only gets turned on when necessary.