It depends on your goals and threat model. If you consider dependence on Google hardware as a threat, it's not better.

Yeah. They have a duress password feature which cleans up the device. Now.. if only you can use it like a linux computer and be able to make full system backups, it would be a lot easier to use that feature. The lack of proper backup facilities make it untenable for holding any critical data.

It's an android fork.