AOSP is still a google-controlled project that requires a ton of blobs, whereas the Pinephone (and other linux compatible smartphones like the Librem 5) has an entire ecosystem of healthy linux distros (from Mobian to Archlinux) running as close as possible to mainline linux.

> GrapheneOS have put huge effort into de-googling

They are doing great work but they're still depending on google for maintaining Android (Can GrapheneOS do anything against a feature pushed by Google in Android 13/14 and so on? Nope).

> Cameras work

You still lose all the post-processing stuff which account for a good portion of perceived picture quality.