Just throwing in my two cents since this thread’s still kicking. A lot of people here think stock Google apps are enough, but honestly, for some of us, they’re just bloated placeholders. I disable most of them right out of the box—Photos, Files by Google, Dialer, Messages—you name it. Either they’re limited, ad-driven, cloud-dependent, or just bad.
The “duplicate app” complaint only makes sense if you have to keep the Google versions. Personally, I’d rather Nothing (or any OEM) build their own apps and give users the option to remove Google’s. Let the users decide what’s actually useful.
Also, about updates—people act like Google updates = magic. But those updates don’t care if your hardware can keep up. I’d rather have an older, stable gallery app that works offline than a shiny cloud-syncing mess that chokes on weaker processors.
Some of us even flash custom ROMs without GApps. Not having Google in everything is a feature, not a bug. If Nothing wants to make their own apps, great—just make them good and optional. That’s real user-focused design, not just shipping everything with “Made by Google” stamped on it.