https://gitlab.com/iode/os/devices is a pretty short list; why would someone choose this over CalyxOS, GrapheneOS, or even Lineage?
Their business model is to *sell* phones with that iodeOS, a fork of Lineage, even if everything is on gitlab and you're welcome to install it on your own. I'm an IT engineer who likes free code, but I'm not really into Android, and I only have so much time. I wouldn't have installed Lineage on my own.
So I wouldn't have had a free version of Android without iode.
The phone I had from them was also refurbished by a local company, which was nice. It's still more eco friendly and responsible than getting a new phone from a big SW company.
I'm just annoyed the company replied to none of my support requests, that I submitted on the website (I wanted comments on the IMS that wasn't working, I wanted a duplicate of the sale receipt, and I wanted the IMEI to be able to report my phone stolen. I had to get my support from nerds on Discord, for the former.
Now it starts getting interesting. Will it also run my banking app? Or is there some crypto mechanism keeping that from happening?
There were F-Droid, Aurora Store, MicroG, Déjà Vu and the Mozilla Location services among others, so it was able to run about any app.
/e/OS does that too.
On that terrible disappointment, back to the shop to get a new phone
And let's whitelist their email, so that iode.tech gets a better score.
The limited hardware support, specially for reasonably priced models with 5G, is a serious concern, and the limitations with mobile banks coopted by Google into refusing to work on alternative ROMs a big issue as well.
As for using Iode over others, it's mostly up to preference. I use it as a daily driver and it does what it says it does. The browser is pretty solid and the request blocker has some neat functions (Although I can't seem to find a way to see/update the blacklist).
If you're looking for a new OS give it a shot, otherwise it's not worth switching.