These apps have worked reliability since our sandboxed Google Play compatibility layer added support for them in 2021. There wasn't a time period where these apps weren't compatible with GrapheneOS after they initially became supported. That was a problem with your setup, but there's no way to figure out what was wrong at this point. Updating sandboxed Google Play without keeping the OS updated is not supported. If you fell significantly behind on updates but were still getting sandboxed Google Play updates, that would explain why things broke. We sometimes gate those updates. We do keep things working for legacy extended support devices, but whether people are on a fully supported device or a legacy one they're expected to keep the OS updated. We don't keep compatibility with old OS versions indefinitely. Disabling the Network permission for sandboxed Google Play services or sandboxed Google Play Store is another possible cause. Regardless of the cause, that's not at all normal and doesn't reflect a typical experience.
> I noticed that GrapheneOS got more than 2x Google’s advertised battery life until I installed Google Play Services in a sandbox.
GrapheneOS will still tend to get better battery life with the same apps installed by the user unless you install a bunch of other Google apps to match the stock Pixel OS out-of-the-box experience. It's easy to make battery life worse by having multiple push messaging systems running at the same time though. Installing sandboxed Google Play in 2 separate profiles you always keep active could easily have worse battery life than the stock Pixel OS since it's 2 whole separate isolated instances of it vs. the stock Pixel OS having them built into the OS as highly privileged cross-profile system services.