Which Pixel to get?

My current phone (iPhone 13 mini) is telling me to retire it, and I want to get into Graphene. I really dislike that my phone sometimes will just hang while I’m swipe typing and don’t want to buy a new one that has these latency issues. I also don’t want to spend a ton of money.

I was looking at the Pixel 8a which is being sold for $500. Anyone else use it with Graphene? Do you use a swipe keyboard? Any responsiveness issues?

What about storage? Coming from Apple, I can see my current phone using about 64GB with OS + apps. Anyone recently made the transition and can tell me if I can expect this number to grow or shrink?

Thanks a bunch!