You could buy a used Pixel. Also, they are working with a partner to create their own phone hardware.

This statement implies ignorance to the reasons the project selected Pixel devices.

GrapheneOS has the same camera features and quality as the stock Pixel OS within the same apps. You can use Pixel Camera on GrapheneOS even without sandboxed Google Play in the same profile if you want the full feature set. If you want extremely good cameras, the Pixel 10 Pro and Pixel 10 Pro XL are the best choices. Those provide the highest quality image sensors among the available supported devices and the Pro mode in Pixel Camera. See https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/ for how those compare to other devices. Our own Camera app will be heavily overhauled to narrow the gap more with the Pixel Camera app but you can already use that especially if you care a lot about this.

You can run the proprietary Pixel camera software on GrapheneOS just fine (properly sandboxed).

GrapheneOS only works on Pixel devices so it only targets a very limited set of Android camera hardware.

They are working with a partner to get their own phone hardware.

You could also buy a used Pixel.

GrapheneOS is very usable as a daily driver. Nearly every Android app can be used on it and there's a huge ecosystem of open source Android apps. You should read the whole linked article which explains in depth how someone new to using it set up their device. They chose a certain way of doing it to balance their priorities. Only a tiny portion of apps can't be used on GrapheneOS which are mostly a subset of around 15% of banking apps which ban using a non-Google-certified OS in a way we can't easily work around. Most banking apps do work and extremely very other apps are unavailable. Google apps and services aren't used by GrapheneOS by default but can be installed as regular sandboxed apps.

You don't need a Google account to use YouTube and can use it via the browser, NewPipe or several other alternatives rather than their app.

The linked article covers someone's first experience with it with a lot of detail. They're using it as their daily driver with mainly open source apps and separate profiles with mainstream apps they still need. They're using those with much better privacy protections including having sandboxed Google Play in those profiles for using mainstream apps rather than regular highly privileged Google Play heavily integrated into the OS and not running with the standard app sandbox or privileges.

Like others have said, you can use Youtube without Google account. Moreover, you can give Google the middle finger by using uBlock Origin or viewing though a third party client like VacuumTube. Also don't forget the shorts filter recently featured on HN to remove those annoying portrait format videos.

As someone who doesn't have a Google account, I can use YouTube just fine on my GrapheneOS phone using apps like NewPipe.

Why do I need a Google account for Youtube? It seems I can watch nearly any video I want without logging in. Moreover there are anonymity proxies like Invidious.

From a quick look online it may be the Pixel 8 https://www.gsmarena.com/google_pixel_8-12546.php at 150.5 x 70.8 x 8.9 mm based on recommended devices.

Maybe an old Pixel with an old version of GrapheneOS, but at that point you're losing most of the security benefits and, depending on your goals, you may be better served with a small phone running a different OS

They are working with a partner to get their own phone hardware.

No, that's a misconception. GrapheneOS has only ever supported devices where the cellular radio is isolated from the OS and unprivileged. It does not have access to memory it hasn't been permitted to access by GrapheneOS. Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, NFC, UWB, etc. are isolated components too. Our hardware requirements are listed in our FAQ and require proper isolation for radios:

https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

8th, 9th and 10th gen Pixels provide our full set of requirements with 7 years of support from launch. 6th and 7th gen Pixels are missing the ARMv9 security features including the extremely important hardware memory tagging (MTE) feature we heavily use to protect against exploitation. Even the first devices we supported back in 2014 including the Nexus 5 had isolation for the cellular radio but similar isolation for Wi-Fi/Bluetooth started with the Nexus 5X.

They are working on getting their own hardware.