As with most others I use a different launcher but I switched user accounts to try it out for you and you can theme those icons and then pick a single colour, a trio of colours or choose wallpaper to colour the icons in other colours other than black and white.
I use open camera which has always been fine for my needs and doesnt include any meta data with the saved images.
Battery life has been absolutely fine for me but I never used the stock ROM for comparison.
Sandboxed stuff I’ve used has always worked as is expected but I dont use a lot of apps tbh
I use organic maps but again I very rarely use maps and it can be a bit odd in the way it works but still it has got me where I’ve been going each time.
I think it is great and wouldn’t want to switch back here is a page that lists all bank app compatability as that is a common concern for people.
Hope some of this helps :)
“Heavily integrated into eBay” except it isnt any more.
Firstly the article is a year and a half old but although you can still use PayPal on eBay to say it is heavily integrated is bullshit. EBay started moving away from PayPal years ago and at this point have integrated their own systems linking to your bank account to take the place of what they used to use PayPal for.