If anyone from Motorola reads this thread; the market is beyond ripe for a good shake up. Going full open source and pushing updates & openness, user control and freedom, you will gobble up a good chunk of market share. Make MDM easy & first class (no third parties...), and a ton of corp will roll it out too. We need you more than you think.
This is just developer fantasy. The average consumer doesn't care even one bit. Is the phone smooth? Does it have a good camera? Does it have a good battery? Does it last more than 2 years?
Go to some developing countries around Asia and you'll be surprised how people prioritise features when buying a phone vs developed ones. The developing countries account for most of the sales of most phone manufacturers. Phones that are like $150-200 sell like hot cakes.
This is evident even in the laptop segment. What developers want and what the average consumer wants/needs are two different things. Eg. Framework laptops. Macbook Pro vs Air.
It's not just the average consumer. I continue to be surprised that so many developers and other tech nerds - the type who post on HN - chose and continue to choose the iPhone over Android when Apple dictates what apps they can install and locks third-party accessories out of certain features.
Current times do present the opportunity to raise awareness of the issue though. App store bans for apps like ICEBlock, and various laws age-gating app stores considerably expand the population with reason to care who has ultimate control of their phone.
If this translates to longer device retention (if you enable battery changes, a current gen device can easily last a decade), people will care.
$200 phone that you can use for 5+ years without handicapping the user will be a much bigger hit.
This translates well to the boots paradox. This can change "cheaper is much more expensive in the long run" to "cheaper is a bit more expensive on the long run".
This, of course, will not create enough value for the people who doesn't need or appreciate the need for these $200 phones.
The market for programs like revanced is pretty big, that's why Google is going to remove "sideloading". At which point there will be a large market for an open phone that allows the user to install what they want.
> [..] Phones that are like $150-200 sell like hot cakes.
True and all. But there is at least anecdotal evidence the niche for $500 phones marketed as not-google/not-samsung/not-apple/not-chinese is substantial and growing. Here in Europe I'm seeing Fairphones in hands of non-techies, so there seems to be some willingness to pay a premium to move away from big tech.
> The average consumer doesn't care even one bit. Is the phone smooth? Does it have a good camera? Does it have a good battery? Does it last more than 2 years?
think company-issued phones. There are many that would love to not have to deal with samsung and apple.
I don't know why you need to bring developing countries into the discussion. I'm quite sure average users from developed countries don't care that either.
I originally didn't want to comment out of personal spite... but I once bought a motorola phone that got its last update (security or not) 23 months after launch.
This is spot on. I’ve had this conversation with so many software engineers that struggle to understand that what they want is rarely what your average Joe wants. “Well I’m right and they should understand that” is usually a good summary of the response.
Motorola was already in my top position in the list of possible upgrades for my old (ASUS) phone, for providing at moderate prices USB 3 connectivity and DisplayPort 1.4 that allows the connection of an external monitor, for a desktop mode.
With this announcement, Motorola has consolidated its top position, making it unlikely for me to choose something else.
Yep, first party open source and long support. If this existed, you'll get people recommending it to their parents. Now the only thing I can honestly recommend is a UbuntuTouch phone but mostly to devs, for now.
I don't think the EU wants FOSS phones. If anything they'll push regulations that make them illegal to own. They want backdoors for all of your communication.
Agreed. That could be pretty cool. Motorola devices are already solid and reasonnably priced; if they had a GrapheneOS line that would just be fantastic.
The HN crowd is not representative of the entire market. Most people don't care about the operating system and only want something that
1) is simple to use
2) they already know
3) they happen to already have (most people keep their phones for many years)
Also, the largest phone market in the world is the developing countries market. Cheap phones are supreme right now
Contactless payments already work on GrapheneOS via Curve Pay, PayPal and the apps of many European banks. Solving the duopoly between Apple and Google for smartphone tap-to-pay in the US isn't something GrapheneOS can do.
Regulators / legislators can force Google to let GrapheneOS pass the Play Integrity API checks and Google Pay will start working.
There are plenty of people looking to get out of the Google/Apple sphere of influence. These are people that maybe aren't technical enough to be able to do stuff with flashing their phones. Another big hurdle is figuring out solutions for getting critical stuff working for things like payments, banking, and soon even identity cards and drivers licenses.
The hard part is building an ecosystem for app providers that is easy enough for users, app developers, and device manufacturers to engage with while still being secure enough. Google/Apple are asserting a lot of control over this space right now. But their technical moat is limited to them gate keeping their own OS and devices.
A more open ecosystem here could force some changes in this space. Given recent turmoil around treaties, tariffs, etc., the EU, and other regions, depending a bit less on US based software providers here would be healthy and overdue. Somebody needs to start somewhere for this to happen.
However, moving the use of alternative operating systems for mobile devices beyond the hobbyist/enthusiast level is going to require a bit of work. This is the main blocker to adoption of alternatives to Android and IOS.
Some policy changes would be helpful. E.g. mandating proper access to banking and other things outside of the Apple Store and Google Playstore ecosystems would be helpful. Right now, banks default to covering essentially only those two for "security reasons". That gives a de-facto oligarchy to Google and Apple. Breaking that open might require some arm twisting.
Financial targets will be hit, if many people buy their phones. But the question is whether they are short term optimizing, or having it as a long term strategy.
Can I be devils advocate and say I think this is two years too late on Motorola's side?
Samsung has a great offer with their Galaxy Enterprise Edition phones. Phones with 5 year warranty. 7 years of software updates.
Motorola, welcome! I wish you did this before I bought my last Samsung phone. That being said, if you can keep this up till my current phone needs replacing, you will have a customer in me, guaranteed.
My Lenovo experience has surpassed that of any other computer hardware brand.
It's not too late, Samsung is one of the most closed Android OEMs and they're going in the wrong direction. They just removed most of the recovery menu. [1]
Google is dead set on taking away our right to run software of our choice on devices that we own. I think if Motorola plays their cards right they could take the geeky enthusiast market by storm, and that's going to snowball into recommendations to friends and family, and eventually - corporate.
This could be the reality in the near future: Do you want to keep using ReVanced? Motorola. Do you want to install a custom OS? Motorola. Do you want privacy? Motorola.
However I think that Google could decide to sabotage them by forcing them to implement their user-hostile agenda, if I remember correctly there are conditions that OEMs must meet to be allowed access to Play Services/Play Store?
Google could refuse unless Motorola/GrapheneOS enforce developers ID verification and effectively give Google unilateral control over what type of software is allowed to run on our devices.
In fact Motorola did the opposite: they recently announced that in their opinion they found a loophole in the EU ecodesign regulation that they will exploit in order to not provide updates for some of their cheaper phone models.
After that, why would anyone trust any of their promises for other models?
This was figured out a while ago based on the hints given.
That said, I'm pretty excited. Motorola of the last decade or so has made really good hardware with basically stock firmware and a terrible update policy, which is why many avoid them. Seriously, they just offer quarterly updates on flagships, which is incredibly unsecure. Punting software to Graphene solves the biggest gripe many have.
The ThinkPhone is an exception, yeah. It’s similar to older Android One phones like their Moto X4. Not different because you are in EU, US models get same treatment.
The razr and edge lines do not get as reliable monthly updates and ship with bloatware.
not any longer. My edge 70 required weeks to uninstall bloatware, taboola and all that crap. Eventually settled with netguard to kill any non approved outgoing connection. It has been a real pain. Changed my view on moto completely. I have been a happy user of a Motorola one for 6 years...
That is also ths reason why I migrated my parents from Motorola to Pixel. Well… that and the amount of bloatware and ad notifications a new Motorola I bought had. I returned it inmediatelly, and it's then when I went for Pixels.
Update policy is one of the largest reason if not THE reason why I didn't pick motorola phone. We had a last Motorola phone which we had to buy a new one solely because the last phone hadn't received updates even though the hardware was top notch and we needed an particular app (also its battery was a bit of issue)
So with them partnering up with graphene, I am super excited too. Motorola phones are also pretty price effective imo for the quality of hardware.
I am exited as well but the OS is only one part of the equation. If the firmware BLOBs don't get updates we still have a problem. I really hope this cooperation means that Motorola commits to longer support for gOS devices.
Pepperidge Farm remembers owning a first-gen Moto X on Verizon and waiting over a year+ for the Android 5.0 update, getting abandoned on the first-generation Moto 360 smartwatch (not even getting Android Wear 1.6), and getting abandoned on the first-gen Moto Hint earbud (not getting promised features with the first-gen Moto X).
Fantastic news, Motorola is known for prioritizing DC dimming on their screens, which many report significantly reduces eye strain [1]. I was never aware of the issue, I thought my switch to an OLED phone (iPhone xs) just coincided with getting older and normal tired eyes of aging. But when I switched to a pixel phone my eyes began blurring and aching to an extent I started to research a bit and found that the pixel screens had extremely low Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) rate for screen dimming, apparently as a cost saving measure, and eye strain was a common complaint. I do not experience anything like it with desktop/laptop IPS screens.
Their OLED screens + software are some of the best for those of us who suffer. Motorola is one of the last major companies to still offer IPS devices too. In terms of screen hardware, Graphene chose well.
I just hope that GrapheneOS will be offered on one of the IPS phones in addition to the expected OLED model(s).
GrapheneOS is finally decoupling itself from Google Pixel phones. This is great news. Motorola makes great hardware too. Looking forward to see what comes out of this.
Do they really still design their own hardware? I was under the impression that the Moto series and more was designed by a Chinese OEM, since Motorola Mobility is owned by Lenovo (China).
Do they? I genuinely don’t know because I don’t think I have ever seen a Motorola smartphone in the wild and their heavy involvement with the police and surveillance state has my attention piqued a bit. I’m just saying GrapheneOS partnering with possibly the biggest police state surveillance solutions provider? What’s that all about?
Are you confusing Motorola Mobility with Motorola Solutions? The article is about Motorola Mobility, which makes cell phones. Motorola Solutions makes two-way radios and surveillance systems. They split in 2011.
That's not the one. and of course they do and I'm super happy to hear about that partnership. I highly recommend checking them out!
A year ago I got a "10 month old flagship" Moto, after research. For half the price of top Samsung that was available locally at the moment in stores, I got:
- Worse, but still really great CPU (Snapdragon 8s gen3 instead of "non-s" for Samsung)
- faster storage (UFS 4.0)
- more RAM (16GB LPDDR5x)
- much better charging (125W with... equally that strong charger in the box, 50W wireless, 10W reverse)
- much more storage (1TB)
- in a very slim wooden-back case :O
It also has great optically stabilized camera (with some challenges when it comes to "shutter speed" - it does a lot of processing so your photos are sometimes timed awkwardly), amazing low light for main camera, but that's a rabbit hole I don't want to go into.
Software-wise it was not as good as the fame goes, but still very good. I do have all the newest upgrades (currently Android 16 with Feb sec update) but it was not as "vanilla" as people claim. Still better than most things around and in the end I was able to trivially remove everything I don't like (which persisted across updates). With exception of their weird Dolby app that is useless anyway. This partnership with GrapheneOS makes me think they are still serious about clean OS.
The phone also has VERY GOOD support for external screens. I'm really impressed by that, I don't see any real drawbacks compared to Samsung's Dex here. Motorola should really invest into promoting that more, but I'm confused with some newer phones lacking screen support (make sure to double check!). And by good I mean good: on that phone I was able to play Diablo mobile on full external screen with wireless gamepad, while texting on the phone, with no hiccups and hardware reporting temps around 40-42 Celsius.
The Motorola phones are generally good performers and value for money. My only gripe is that they cannot have their batteries replaced easily - even by phone repair shops.
I understand that this is because you have to disassemble / un-glue the phones through the front and remove the display. For this reason, the repair shops I have asked have said they don't 'do' Motorola phones because there's too much risk in breaking the display.
This effectively means that the life of the phone is determined by the ageing of the battery.
I bought a Motorola phone (G Stylus 2025) while in the US after discovering my brand new Sony Xperia VII phone would not work in upstate NY.
It's a great device, I loved using it. It had features I specifically wanted (still has a 3.5mm jack, a microSD slot, and wireless charging). It also looks fantastic with their Pantone colours, and it feels more comfortable than my Xperia VII. There's a wired fast charge feature that is incredibly fast. The Motorola was just 25% of the price and it's as good as the Sony in almost every way.
I do remember one flaw, the compass (ie direction pointing in Google Maps) was terrible. I'd sometimes walk a block using Google Maps before finding the compass was leading me in the wrong direction. But GPS seemed fine, and data reception was sometimes better than my friend's iPhone in the same places. The selfie camera was excellent, though something about the rear camera I wasn't quite as happy about. The Stylus is nice to have, but honestly I don't use it as much as I thought I would.
I wish there were more Motorola phones in Australia, I've probably become a Motorola / Lenovo customer now. (I already use a Lenovo ThinkPad).
For reference, my previous phones have been iPhone, Google, Samsung, Sony, now Motorola.
I remember when they were briefly owned by Google (I think) and assembled the MotoX in the US so you could buy a bamboo or customized case. It had one of the first low power always listening CPUs to listen for you to say Ok Google. Once that didn't work out Lenovo bought them and they had decent but not many flagship midrange phones. Moving forward a phone with decent security running grapheneOS that isn't a Pixel sounds good especially considering how other manufacturers such as OnePlus are embracing AI integrations. I think a number of people get sold on Apple devices based on their purported security so this collab could bolster some sales, let's hope they make it work and keep it open. I'd buy another one especially if I could get a bamboo case.
I still have 2 Motorola phones here. One > 12y old and one even older. The > 12y old one can still be used for calls and maps and so on, is just a bit slow these days. The even older one would be painfully slow and probably only able to use 1 or 2 apps at a time, but I am using it as a music player. Both phones still just work. Based on this Motorola seems to have made great phone hardware.
Before the iphone came and all the android uniformity, i used to use motorolla phones a lot and they were excellent. If the quality is still the same, with GrapheneOS they are going to have an excellent product.
You're mixing up 2 different companies descended from the original Motorola. Motorola Solutions is an entirely different company from Motorola Mobility with different owners. GrapheneOS is working with the company owned by Lenovo.
One thing that bothers me is the seeming lack of transparency about who is running GrapheneOS. Daniel Micay supposedly stepped down, so who is calling the shots now? Who runs the CI? Who owns the update servers and signing keys? Who am I trusting?
The directors of the the GrapheneOS Foundation and the other things you're talking about are public information. I stepped down as lead developer due to relentless harassment preventing me from being productive. The same people targeting me with harassment misrepresented what was happening.
You shouldn't get info about GrapheneOS from Hacker News comments especially when multiple regulars here are part of the attacks on GrapheneOS. Hacker News permits people to freely engage in libel and harassment towards me on nearly every post about GrapheneOS.
What I find particularity odd is that on their donation page [1], Daniel Micay's personal Github account is linked as a donation option (using Github sponsors).
(I opted to donate via bank transfer instead, because that is at least addressed at the GrapheneOS Foundation, not one specific member.)
The directors of the the GrapheneOS Foundation and the other things you're talking about are public information. I stepped down as lead developer due to relentless harassment preventing me from being productive. The same people targeting me with harassment misrepresented what was happening.
You shouldn't get info about GrapheneOS from Hacker News comments especially when multiple regulars here are part of the attacks on GrapheneOS. Hacker News permits people to freely engage in libel and harassment towards me on nearly every post about GrapheneOS.
The motorola phones are neat, especially razr's, but practically disposable with their dismal update support lasting in some cases only a year or a major version I'd read. Selling me a $1500usd flip phone that is practically disposable oob for updates is a non-starter.
Now put GrapheneOS on it with better support than the vendor can provide, now that's highly appealing. I wanted to get a used pixel 9 pro xl to update my old pro 6 and run graphene on, but pixel 9xl have defective screens on whole, so maybe not, and with Graphene divesting from pixel hardware now, maybe this is the way.
Motorola Signature (2026) has 7 years of support. It's a subset of Motorola's future devices in 2027 and later which are going to support GrapheneOS since the current ones in 2026 didn't quite meet all of the requirements yet. The intent has never been to support their existing devices but rather for future devices to provide everything needed and official GrapheneOS support. There's a lot of work to do. Meeting all of our requirements on low-end devices is currently unrealistic but can be a goal further down the road.
grapheneos has a hard requirement for the vendor to provide software support for 6+ years (iirc), so i expect the updates will be better even for stock users
however this might be only for their new Motorola Signature line of flagships...
Our official requirement is 5 years of support meeting our standards but it will be raised to 7 at some point. The Motorola Signature (2026) already has 7 years of support but it's future devices which are going to meet all our requirements and provide official GrapheneOS support.
Hmm the one thing I'm kinda missing with grapheneos is mobile payments. The banks here in Europe used to have their own nfc apps but in my country they've all moved to Google wallet :( or Samsung pay.
I don't want Google monitoring my payments so I'm using Samsung now but I'd love to have something more open for this.
I was kinda hoping the partner would be Samsung so they might collaborate on a payment system too. I don't think Motorola has anything like that.
If you're in Europe you can use Curve Pay, PayPal and multiple banks which haven't moved to Google Pay. Alternatively, pay in cash if you want privacy.
They had a great opportunity to make an ecosystem not dependent on google and apple and they utterly failed. You can't even log into it on the web, you must use the app.
If you don't want Google monitoring your payment you shouldn't use mobile payments. In fact you shouldn't even use cards, because those likely have agreements with Google for data sharing. If you're serious, it's simple, just use cash.
Mobile payments used to work without any interference from Google through a bank's own implementation of the wireless payment protocols. On iPhone you got stuck with Apple's system (they restricted their NFC stack so competitors couldn't do this) but most phones were paying wirelessly without Google ever seeing a transaction.
Over the years banks phased out their NFC support and all moved to Google Wallet on Android, I think the last bank finished their transition a year and a half ago. A real shame.
This is good. Having an alternative to Pixel-Phones for GOS makes sense. I wonder if we will have the option to buy a Motorola phone with GOS out of the box (not sure if i would trust that, but it might be interesting for some people that are skeptical of installing it on their Pixel by themselves).
This is a good step for users wanting more options for GOS. Pre-installed choices could address worries about installation for those who aren't comfortable doing it themselves.
Is that still up to date? On Motorola Mobility's Wikipedia page [1] it says
> [Motorola Mobility LLC] is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hong Kong based Chinese technology giant Lenovo.
Lenovo is a publicly traded company, and according to its shareholding structure report for 2025 [2] its main shareholder is Legend Holdings Corporation. (Lenovo is also listed as a subsidiary on Legend Holding Corporation's Wikipedia page [3].)
Legend Holding Corporation is again publicly traded, with all big shareholders being Chinese according to its 2024 annual report [4]. The biggest one is CAS Holdings with 30% of the shares.
The China Academy of Sciences is owned by the Chinese government.
So it seems like if Google still owns part of Motorola Mobility, it's not a main shareholder.
I was going to ask wasn't motorola bought and sold so many times that it ended up in Chinese hands. It ended up in Google's hands instead... Ngl, kind of underwhelming from Graphene
Edit: wait, that's old news, it is part of Lenovo...
Bought a 2nd hand Pixel 8 just yesterday specifically to tinker with GrapheneOS. When there is a phone sold with GrapheneOS pre-installed (and assume with no restrictions I don't want and good reviews) I'll probably be in the market for it.
Back in the days, I switched from Iphone 3G to Motorola Defy in order to benefit from more customisation. I'm now back into Apple ecosystem since iPhone 6, actually on iPhone 13 but i'm very tempted by GrapheneOS. Going back to Motorola would please me, as I loved this little Defy. Do you think there's any chance to have RCS messages without Google involved ? I want group messages without having to install Whatsapp and not all my contacts are on signal.
> I want group messages without having to install ...
Well now I'm confused. I've always received SMS as fallback when my contacts add me to RCS group messages. But apparently this doesn't always work according to people on the internet at large?
Unfortunately most people still think they're "texting" and have no idea Google and Apple pulled a bait and switch. Meanwhile on my end I receive emoji react spam, each emoji as an independent message, in an incredibly verbose form that quotes the entire message.
It's simultaneously misleading people, a DoS against non-BigTech clients, and monopolistic. The mobile ecosystem just keeps getting worse and there's no sign of regulations fixing it any time soon.
It's supposed to work by downgrading everyone involved if any are not on RCS, because there is no other option. Which has been working fine for me at least, normal MMS issues aside (MMS delivery is often awful). RCS keeps an "is X using RCS?" list on their servers, and every attempt to message someone checks that (with a local cache)... and like >99% of those servers are Google, at this point, so it should be pretty consistent.
That said, I have no idea how often that fails in practice.
And that is how reactions are sent in SMS/MMS. Your app just isn't recognizing them to display them nicely. Maybe try a different one?
An alternative, open and freely accessible OS for mobile computing is always good for a healthy market.
Most of us have a limited view of the global market and don't know which areas prefer de-Googled OSs. If all of India or Africa decided to ditch Google, it would be a massive shift. We cannot forecast if the West will slowly decide to move to other solutions inspired by tech-savvy users or by becoming more privacy-conscious. It will take time, but desktop Linux is also slowly growing.
Motorola if you're reading this remove Glance from your Android 16 on lower end phones it breaks the phone. I'm sure you have some deal with them, but you have control over technical failures that render the device unable to function.
I really hope that the partnership involves support for low-end devices and not only high-end ones. Would be great to have a €200 Phone running GrapheneOS (e.g. G56)
That's already required if you want to sell the device in the EU (or EEA?) at all. So far, Motorola hasn't left the market with their low-end devices so I presume they intend to deliver on the updates
My banking app works fine on GrapheneOS today, but not every banking app does. If it depends on Google Play Integrity with strong integrity it won't because Google has successfully sold the blatant anti-competitive lie that you need to vendor lock-in your users to their OS to get security on mobile.
Secured credentials work fine, everything works fine except stuff that by design is locked in to Google like Google Pay.
I don't think GrapheneOS team would partner with a vendor unless their security/usability standards were met (considering how long it took since the initial announcement) so I'm expecting feature parity with Pixel variants.
I'm just really curious if this phone is going to pass Google's conformance tests and whatnot. I feel like some of that is incompatible with GrapheneOS's security model, so I wonder what's going to happen there.
I think most banking apps already do work on GrapheneOS (not sure about TPM/secured credentials though). Graphene IIRC keeps a compatibility list somewhere. Some don't work, of course, but more do than I would have expected.
For me, the big question is if Google Wallet & its NFC payments will work. They don't on GrapheneOS currently, but if Motorola plans for this to be a fully Google-certified phone with GApps and everything, it will have to, somehow.
A subset of their future devices will meet all of the official requirements for GrapheneOS and provide official support for using it. They may sell devices with it but that would be a separate announcement.
Nice. Got pretty depressed with the state of the world after the articles about police in Spain profiling Google Pixel users with Graphene as drug dealers [0]. Some proper "mainstream" recognition could do a lot here.
It is finally a time to replace laptops with phones and laptop like docking stations. With hardware prices you'll save on buying twice, keep all your stuff in one device etc. That is what any disrupting company should head for.
You sure? I only heard of laws about repairability, not swappable batteries. You can already replace the battery of any phone, the only question is if it'll take you 1 minute (Fairphone) or several hours (every other vendor I'm aware of). The legislation might make it take maybe 1 hour instead of 2, and requires (iirc) that you can obtain legit replacement parts for a few years, but that's about it
Oh that's awesome. Finally the contradiction of buying Google to avoid Google has been resolved for GOS.
I am curious to know how Motorola intents to deal with Google's policies surrounding Android forks, but I'm sure that's a hurdle they know how to cross.
Hopefully wireless payment do work on these, and they have face unlock working. That's really the 2 issues I have with grapheneos.
I know it's supposed to be for privacy nerd, and they will tell you you shouldn't use Google pay because it's bad for privacy and so on... But it's not the majority of people, most are willing to trade some privacy for convenience.
I'd be more concerned for face unlock. You take an OS that goes to the extreme to prevent any external intrusion to your phone and you enable an option to unlock it for anyone by holding the phone to your face?
You can use other contactless payments apps like Curve Pay. It requires Google Play services but with limited permissions. It takes a bit of setup but many people are using it.
I'm so happy about that - out of all the vendors possible. And congratulations to the future users of the OEM Motorola users - You're going to get your security patches FAST.
(not muted my the fact that apparently no one else wanted to reach the high bar for system security)
This is good news. I use a Motorola device and feel it was the best (or at least the least troublesome) among the PRC based brands. Clean UI that's near pure Android..
If they can offer it as choice then hopefully banking apps etc wont get knocked off. And we can have best of both.
Motorola announces a phone for GrapheneOS then requires account for California devices, disables encryption for UK users, requires age checks for Australian users, etc, etc,
Alas that in the US it is seemingly impossible to get unlocked bootloaders now. I'm trying to figure out what couple-year-old international phone to buy now.
Good on Motorola. Incredibly smart to tap these passionate geniuses.
last phone I had was a motorola, you can unlock the bootloader but you have to make an account, give them the IMEI and request an unlock code. it probably has to be a carrier unlocked phone too. the latest motorola phones look to be the same way. pixels are afaik the only phones atm that you can just unlock without any fuss, so long as they were never used with verizon.
I once bought a oneplus phone to unlock the bootloader, they have the same process requiring an account etc, saying it could take up to 2 weeks to get the code. they never emailed it to me so I returned the phone.
Really? That seems odd, where are you looking? Through your Carrier or just for unlocked devices? Depending on who you're with, usually you can just grab an unlocked device and your Carrier to register the device. I've only ever used Google Fi and AT&T though I'm not sure about the others.
Searching duckduckgo for 'Unlocked {device}' returns a lot of results on the shopping tab for phones on Amazon and eBay like the pixel 8/9 plus plenty of other "recent" android devices. Walmart and Bestbuy seem to still have dedicated sections for unlocked phones as well.
Motorola, the one company that still tries to evade the EU ecodesign regulations?
Other vendors just provide the required 5+ years of updates, but Motorola loudly and publicity announced that they saw a loophole in the wording and would use it as an excuse to not provide updates for some models.
This is despicable and worthy of a boycott.
"Operating system updates: From the date of end of placement on the market to at least 5 years after that date, manufacturers, importers, or authorised representatives shall, if they provide security updates, corrective updates, or functionality updates to an operating system, make such updates available at no cost for all units of a product model with the same operating system."
Motorola has committed to 7 years of support for the 2026 variants of the devices which will provide GrapheneOS support in 2027. There's still a lot of work to do in order to meet the GrapheneOS hardware requirements and there isn't going to be support for the existing devices. The whole point is they're working with us to improve their updates and hardware-based security features so that all our requirements are met. The stock OS is also a different thing than the official GrapheneOS support where we'll be making builds with their help. We'll be continuing to provide security preview patches and intend to move to newer kernel LTS branches than Qualcomm if they don't do it themselves.
GrapheneOS won't have to use their stock OS to get firmware, etc. as we do for Pixels.
Fairphone is much further from meeting the requirements and have made it clear they're uninterested in providing proper updates or strong security. There will repeated official statements from the GrapheneOS project of Fairphone not being our OEM partner by clarifying it was a major OEM and that it specifically wasn't them. There's an article published at https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand... with details on how what they're providing isn't what they say it is.
I think "care" is too strong a word. They have limited resources and choose to focus on repairability and sustainability. That is different from not caring.
GrapheneOS is a non-profit and it's not that kind of business partnership. We're getting a device with official GrapheneOS support out of it and they're getting increased device sales from having more secure devices with better updates and official GrapheneOS support. It's not an exclusive partnership but we aren't currently working with any other OEM and don't have the resources to handle multiple for quite a while anyway. They're going to get a lot out of being first.
you know there is a meme in Chinese netizens that they call Lenovo the sweetheart of US empire (美帝良心), the same thing that the same SKU was sold in America that is either cheaper than the equivalent in China or not even listed for
Many people will are reading this comment on completely Lenovo(Chinese)-owned Thinkpad laptop.
If you are worried about devices made in/by Chinese then good luck. Personally i am now more worried about US corps feed my phone data to Palantir.
I'm calling out Graphene for dealing with a Chinese-owned company instead of US or Euro-owned vendor. There is a difference between manufacturing parts and components in China, and the entire design/development, production, assembly, and maintenance being owned by a Chinese-owned vendor.
Not to mention that by their actions Graphene are aiding an economic and political adversary develop more secure devices.
Hardware manufacturers teaming up with and paying for open source software and operating systems is truly how I think we could escape enshittification.
Just give me the hardware and let me run good software on it that works with your hardware.
Motorola is now noted as a candidate for my next phone.
how safe is Chinese Lenovo with closed sourced firmware?
btw. Motorola has absolutely trash cameras, doubt GrapheneOS will change anything about it unless you put there gcam maybe, this is significant downgrade from Pixel cameras
btw. yes, it looks like vanilla Android, though it is not, my mother bought it after mine recommendation (previously used Xiaomi phones) and can't say the ROM would be particularly good
Pixel cameras are not about hardware, though, it's software. They infamously use stock Sony camera hardware and the same exact one for two or three consecutive Pixel generations. No reason for Motorola or anyone else get just as good.
Motorola Signature (2026) and Motorola Razr Fold (2026) are ranked one above the Pixel 10 Pro XL on https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/. It's 2027 and later devices which are relevant though.
> how safe is Chinese Lenovo with closed sourced firmware?
iPhones and Pixels are manufactured in China. Anything we could support is realistically going to be made in China right now.
It's planned for GrapheneOS to have access to the internal code including firmware. Supporting the subset of their future devices meeting the GrapheneOS requirements isn't going to work the same way supporting Pixels does.
> btw. Motorola has absolutely trash cameras, doubt GrapheneOS will change anything about it unless you put there gcam maybe, this is significant downgrade from Pixel cameras
Motorola Signature (2026) and Motorola Razr Fold (2026) are ranked one above the Pixel 10 Pro XL on https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/. It's 2027 and later devices which are relevant though.
> btw. yes, it looks like vanilla Android, though it is not, my mother bought it after mine recommendation (previously used Xiaomi phones) and can't say the ROM would be particularly good
There's no Android OEM shipping vanilla Android. Each one has their own forks of it. Vanilla Android doesn't include Google Mobile Services.
The stock OS is an entirely separate thing from GrapheneOS. Unlike Pixels, we won't need to use the stock OS to obtain firmware and other non-kernel device support code which isn't included in AOSP.
My family had a moto phone and my god does it work till even now while being so snappy. I actually daily drove it for some time quite recently. It only has battery issues (let's hope that EU adds replacable batteries soon as well) and my mom only replaced the phone because she needed app which required the phone update.
Considering this partnership, To me it feels like Motorola can have the update issue be fixed.
Graphene was the reason I was thinking of buying a pixel phone second hand. Actually nope now, I am gonna wait for Motorola to ship GrapheneOS phone. I genuinely wish Motorola good luck for adding grapheneos.
I wish they can add Linux in future too but perhaps that might be asking them of TOO much but this company is probably hearing to the feedback if they have partnered up with grapheneos.
Actually, when I decided to buy my mother the new phone from her old Moto, I made a list and everything and I remember asking her about a new motorola but even me and her (iirc) both were worried about security updates and I saw online reviews/personal experience about software/android version updates being quite an issue which isn't an issue in for example pixel which has 10 years update policy iirc. With grapheneos now being partnered with moto, I do hope that it becomes an issue of the past.
They truly have the chance of becoming a good company for privacy savvy phone users while being affordable and having a good supply chain. I may be getting too excited but whoever thought of the deal must be a genius because I do think that if Motorola plays its cards right, then they definitely got a huge potential unlocked.
A while back I bought a Motorola phone (one of the Moto G-something series) for a family member because I used to have one and had a good experience with it.
I regretted that decision because soon that phone developed a bunch of warts that were a pretty obviously Motorola's idea to monetize their users. It was a constant source of problems. The peak was MotoApps that was constantly popping up with questions and installing random shit on the phone.
That pretty much put Motorola on my dont-buy list.
Doesn't matter to my point if security minded people love their ThinkPads. A lot of things that people love either irrational attachment to a brand, or habit or just copying the habits of those like you. Every time there's a security attack a lot of security people are victims too. They're not immune just because they have those jobs.
You're mixing up 2 different companies descended from the original Motorola. Motorola Solutions is an entirely different company from Motorola Mobility with different owners. GrapheneOS is working with the company owned by Lenovo.
If anyone from Motorola reads this thread; the market is beyond ripe for a good shake up. Going full open source and pushing updates & openness, user control and freedom, you will gobble up a good chunk of market share. Make MDM easy & first class (no third parties...), and a ton of corp will roll it out too. We need you more than you think.
This is just developer fantasy. The average consumer doesn't care even one bit. Is the phone smooth? Does it have a good camera? Does it have a good battery? Does it last more than 2 years?
Go to some developing countries around Asia and you'll be surprised how people prioritise features when buying a phone vs developed ones. The developing countries account for most of the sales of most phone manufacturers. Phones that are like $150-200 sell like hot cakes.
This is evident even in the laptop segment. What developers want and what the average consumer wants/needs are two different things. Eg. Framework laptops. Macbook Pro vs Air.
It's not just the average consumer. I continue to be surprised that so many developers and other tech nerds - the type who post on HN - chose and continue to choose the iPhone over Android when Apple dictates what apps they can install and locks third-party accessories out of certain features.
Current times do present the opportunity to raise awareness of the issue though. App store bans for apps like ICEBlock, and various laws age-gating app stores considerably expand the population with reason to care who has ultimate control of their phone.
If this translates to longer device retention (if you enable battery changes, a current gen device can easily last a decade), people will care.
$200 phone that you can use for 5+ years without handicapping the user will be a much bigger hit.
This translates well to the boots paradox. This can change "cheaper is much more expensive in the long run" to "cheaper is a bit more expensive on the long run".
This, of course, will not create enough value for the people who doesn't need or appreciate the need for these $200 phones.
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The market for programs like revanced is pretty big, that's why Google is going to remove "sideloading". At which point there will be a large market for an open phone that allows the user to install what they want.
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> [..] Phones that are like $150-200 sell like hot cakes.
True and all. But there is at least anecdotal evidence the niche for $500 phones marketed as not-google/not-samsung/not-apple/not-chinese is substantial and growing. Here in Europe I'm seeing Fairphones in hands of non-techies, so there seems to be some willingness to pay a premium to move away from big tech.
Other than flip/niche phones, phones appear to have plateaued.
IF you offer someone a phone with similar specs to others, yet much, much more private - many would go for that.
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> The average consumer doesn't care even one bit. Is the phone smooth? Does it have a good camera? Does it have a good battery? Does it last more than 2 years?
think company-issued phones. There are many that would love to not have to deal with samsung and apple.
>> Make MDM easy & first class (no third parties...), and a ton of corp will roll it out too.
To me, this is how you get around consumers buying locked down more heavily subsidized devices, if you're competing with an open device strategy.
Corporations want corporate devices that (a) are secure, (b) work, and (c) take as little of IT's time as possible to manage.
Motorola + GrapheneOS + Microsoft for a turnkey managed corporate device solution seems surprisingly competitive.
No one suggests that open and developers-friendly phones should be expensive.
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> [..] Phones that are like $150-200 sell like hot cakes
What percentage of that is based on phones at that price having a headphone jack?
I don't know why you need to bring developing countries into the discussion. I'm quite sure average users from developed countries don't care that either.
This would be big for businesses, like the the full title of the article reveals:
"Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS Foundation, marking a new chapter in smartphone security and expanding its enterprise portfolio"
I know a lot of businesses that would love to not be exposed to Google.
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> Does it last more than 2 years?
I originally didn't want to comment out of personal spite... but I once bought a motorola phone that got its last update (security or not) 23 months after launch.
They're on my shit list now.
The average consumer (in the western part of the world) uses an Apple or Samsung phone, not a Motorola.
Lenovo is not going to change that, nor will they ever make a phone that is better at being a Samsung phone than Samsung.
I think that in the current smartphone manufacturer landscape, being an underdog kind of requires serving niche segments.
For consumers maybe, for countries on the other hand there's a massive push for digital independence right now and this is part of it.
This is spot on. I’ve had this conversation with so many software engineers that struggle to understand that what they want is rarely what your average Joe wants. “Well I’m right and they should understand that” is usually a good summary of the response.
Motorola was already in my top position in the list of possible upgrades for my old (ASUS) phone, for providing at moderate prices USB 3 connectivity and DisplayPort 1.4 that allows the connection of an external monitor, for a desktop mode.
With this announcement, Motorola has consolidated its top position, making it unlikely for me to choose something else.
Unfortunately many Motorola phones (even flagship) do NOT do video out.
Bear in mind it will solely be future devices which are supported. They're being developed and aren't launched yet.
What do you mean desktop mode? I though only Samsung Android phones had that, called Samsung DeX.
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Yep, first party open source and long support. If this existed, you'll get people recommending it to their parents. Now the only thing I can honestly recommend is a UbuntuTouch phone but mostly to devs, for now.
But where is the EU?
They should be funding FOSS like they are funding science.
The EU Commission had an open consultation about "Open Source and Digital Ecosystems" recently and is planing to (more) heavily invest in OSS in the future as a matter of sovereignty. https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-ope...
I don't think the EU wants FOSS phones. If anything they'll push regulations that make them illegal to own. They want backdoors for all of your communication.
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Don’t they already fund more than anyone else? Not saying that it is currently enough.
They are busy pushing Chat Control.
Agreed. That could be pretty cool. Motorola devices are already solid and reasonnably priced; if they had a GrapheneOS line that would just be fantastic.
The HN crowd is not representative of the entire market. Most people don't care about the operating system and only want something that 1) is simple to use 2) they already know 3) they happen to already have (most people keep their phones for many years)
Also, the largest phone market in the world is the developing countries market. Cheap phones are supreme right now
and a 4 to 5 inch display ...
I'm just hoping they make figuring out contactless payments a priority.
Contactless payments already work on GrapheneOS via Curve Pay, PayPal and the apps of many European banks. Solving the duopoly between Apple and Google for smartphone tap-to-pay in the US isn't something GrapheneOS can do.
Regulators / legislators can force Google to let GrapheneOS pass the Play Integrity API checks and Google Pay will start working.
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Curve pay works great btw!
> a good chunk of market share
Seriously how? Unless you mean "a good chunk of market share for a niche OS"?
There are plenty of people looking to get out of the Google/Apple sphere of influence. These are people that maybe aren't technical enough to be able to do stuff with flashing their phones. Another big hurdle is figuring out solutions for getting critical stuff working for things like payments, banking, and soon even identity cards and drivers licenses.
The hard part is building an ecosystem for app providers that is easy enough for users, app developers, and device manufacturers to engage with while still being secure enough. Google/Apple are asserting a lot of control over this space right now. But their technical moat is limited to them gate keeping their own OS and devices.
A more open ecosystem here could force some changes in this space. Given recent turmoil around treaties, tariffs, etc., the EU, and other regions, depending a bit less on US based software providers here would be healthy and overdue. Somebody needs to start somewhere for this to happen.
However, moving the use of alternative operating systems for mobile devices beyond the hobbyist/enthusiast level is going to require a bit of work. This is the main blocker to adoption of alternatives to Android and IOS.
Some policy changes would be helpful. E.g. mandating proper access to banking and other things outside of the Apple Store and Google Playstore ecosystems would be helpful. Right now, banks default to covering essentially only those two for "security reasons". That gives a de-facto oligarchy to Google and Apple. Breaking that open might require some arm twisting.
Wat would be the compelling argument for middle managers who only think of meeting financial targets?
Financial targets will be hit, if many people buy their phones. But the question is whether they are short term optimizing, or having it as a long term strategy.
> Going full open source and pushing updates & openness, user control and freedom, you will gobble up a good chunk of market share.
Of the enthusiast market. The absolutely worst customers to be dependent on.
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FYI, GrapheneOS had an estimated 400,000 users a few months ago based on the number of update downloads:
https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/1992253499258892477
Sure, it's only a blip compared to GMS Android builds, but it's many more than a few neckbeards.
Can I be devils advocate and say I think this is two years too late on Motorola's side?
Samsung has a great offer with their Galaxy Enterprise Edition phones. Phones with 5 year warranty. 7 years of software updates.
Motorola, welcome! I wish you did this before I bought my last Samsung phone. That being said, if you can keep this up till my current phone needs replacing, you will have a customer in me, guaranteed.
My Lenovo experience has surpassed that of any other computer hardware brand.
It's not too late, Samsung is one of the most closed Android OEMs and they're going in the wrong direction. They just removed most of the recovery menu. [1]
Google is dead set on taking away our right to run software of our choice on devices that we own. I think if Motorola plays their cards right they could take the geeky enthusiast market by storm, and that's going to snowball into recommendations to friends and family, and eventually - corporate.
This could be the reality in the near future: Do you want to keep using ReVanced? Motorola. Do you want to install a custom OS? Motorola. Do you want privacy? Motorola.
However I think that Google could decide to sabotage them by forcing them to implement their user-hostile agenda, if I remember correctly there are conditions that OEMs must meet to be allowed access to Play Services/Play Store?
Google could refuse unless Motorola/GrapheneOS enforce developers ID verification and effectively give Google unilateral control over what type of software is allowed to run on our devices.
[1] https://9to5google.com/2026/02/27/samsung-galaxy-update-andr...
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In fact Motorola did the opposite: they recently announced that in their opinion they found a loophole in the EU ecodesign regulation that they will exploit in order to not provide updates for some of their cheaper phone models. After that, why would anyone trust any of their promises for other models?
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This was figured out a while ago based on the hints given.
That said, I'm pretty excited. Motorola of the last decade or so has made really good hardware with basically stock firmware and a terrible update policy, which is why many avoid them. Seriously, they just offer quarterly updates on flagships, which is incredibly unsecure. Punting software to Graphene solves the biggest gripe many have.
That is not what I experience on ThinkPhone. I get monthly security updates for about two years now.
Maybe it is an exception? I'm in EU if that matters.
And Motorola is almost free of bloatware. It is practically a stock Android.
> Maybe it is an exception?
The ThinkPhone is an exception, yeah. It’s similar to older Android One phones like their Moto X4. Not different because you are in EU, US models get same treatment.
The razr and edge lines do not get as reliable monthly updates and ship with bloatware.
not any longer. My edge 70 required weeks to uninstall bloatware, taboola and all that crap. Eventually settled with netguard to kill any non approved outgoing connection. It has been a real pain. Changed my view on moto completely. I have been a happy user of a Motorola one for 6 years...
Two years? What has this world become... Come back in six years. :-D
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According to Reddit, that Thinkphone seems to be an exception to Motorola's poor update reputation.
That is also ths reason why I migrated my parents from Motorola to Pixel. Well… that and the amount of bloatware and ad notifications a new Motorola I bought had. I returned it inmediatelly, and it's then when I went for Pixels.
Still a bold move considering the increased malware on android devices vs ios. My parents would have their banking information stolen within 6 months
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Update policy is one of the largest reason if not THE reason why I didn't pick motorola phone. We had a last Motorola phone which we had to buy a new one solely because the last phone hadn't received updates even though the hardware was top notch and we needed an particular app (also its battery was a bit of issue)
So with them partnering up with graphene, I am super excited too. Motorola phones are also pretty price effective imo for the quality of hardware.
I am exited as well but the OS is only one part of the equation. If the firmware BLOBs don't get updates we still have a problem. I really hope this cooperation means that Motorola commits to longer support for gOS devices.
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Update policies... hah!
Pepperidge Farm remembers owning a first-gen Moto X on Verizon and waiting over a year+ for the Android 5.0 update, getting abandoned on the first-generation Moto 360 smartwatch (not even getting Android Wear 1.6), and getting abandoned on the first-gen Moto Hint earbud (not getting promised features with the first-gen Moto X).
Fantastic news, Motorola is known for prioritizing DC dimming on their screens, which many report significantly reduces eye strain [1]. I was never aware of the issue, I thought my switch to an OLED phone (iPhone xs) just coincided with getting older and normal tired eyes of aging. But when I switched to a pixel phone my eyes began blurring and aching to an extent I started to research a bit and found that the pixel screens had extremely low Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) rate for screen dimming, apparently as a cost saving measure, and eye strain was a common complaint. I do not experience anything like it with desktop/laptop IPS screens.
A 4" flip phone with graphene would be so nice.
[1] https://www.androidcentral.com/phones/best-phones-for-pwm-fl...
(I am reposting from leak past yesterday)
Their OLED screens + software are some of the best for those of us who suffer. Motorola is one of the last major companies to still offer IPS devices too. In terms of screen hardware, Graphene chose well.
I just hope that GrapheneOS will be offered on one of the IPS phones in addition to the expected OLED model(s).
Agreed. An IPS graphene phone would be perfect.
> pixel screens had extremely low Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) rate for screen dimming, apparently as a cost saving measure
The PWM issues are inexcusable. Cost saving measure on a £999 phone. Ridiculous!
iphones ship an accessibility toggle to disable PWM.
So do pixel 10 series with Graphene (though it is only a small improvement). All other pixels are even worse with zero mitigations.
GrapheneOS is finally decoupling itself from Google Pixel phones. This is great news. Motorola makes great hardware too. Looking forward to see what comes out of this.
> Motorola makes great hardware too
Do they really still design their own hardware? I was under the impression that the Moto series and more was designed by a Chinese OEM, since Motorola Mobility is owned by Lenovo (China).
> Motorola makes great hardware too
Do they? I genuinely don’t know because I don’t think I have ever seen a Motorola smartphone in the wild and their heavy involvement with the police and surveillance state has my attention piqued a bit. I’m just saying GrapheneOS partnering with possibly the biggest police state surveillance solutions provider? What’s that all about?
Are you confusing Motorola Mobility with Motorola Solutions? The article is about Motorola Mobility, which makes cell phones. Motorola Solutions makes two-way radios and surveillance systems. They split in 2011.
That's not the one. and of course they do and I'm super happy to hear about that partnership. I highly recommend checking them out!
A year ago I got a "10 month old flagship" Moto, after research. For half the price of top Samsung that was available locally at the moment in stores, I got:
- Worse, but still really great CPU (Snapdragon 8s gen3 instead of "non-s" for Samsung)
- faster storage (UFS 4.0)
- more RAM (16GB LPDDR5x)
- much better charging (125W with... equally that strong charger in the box, 50W wireless, 10W reverse)
- much more storage (1TB)
- in a very slim wooden-back case :O
It also has great optically stabilized camera (with some challenges when it comes to "shutter speed" - it does a lot of processing so your photos are sometimes timed awkwardly), amazing low light for main camera, but that's a rabbit hole I don't want to go into.
Software-wise it was not as good as the fame goes, but still very good. I do have all the newest upgrades (currently Android 16 with Feb sec update) but it was not as "vanilla" as people claim. Still better than most things around and in the end I was able to trivially remove everything I don't like (which persisted across updates). With exception of their weird Dolby app that is useless anyway. This partnership with GrapheneOS makes me think they are still serious about clean OS.
The phone also has VERY GOOD support for external screens. I'm really impressed by that, I don't see any real drawbacks compared to Samsung's Dex here. Motorola should really invest into promoting that more, but I'm confused with some newer phones lacking screen support (make sure to double check!). And by good I mean good: on that phone I was able to play Diablo mobile on full external screen with wireless gamepad, while texting on the phone, with no hiccups and hardware reporting temps around 40-42 Celsius.
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The Motorola phones are generally good performers and value for money. My only gripe is that they cannot have their batteries replaced easily - even by phone repair shops.
I understand that this is because you have to disassemble / un-glue the phones through the front and remove the display. For this reason, the repair shops I have asked have said they don't 'do' Motorola phones because there's too much risk in breaking the display.
This effectively means that the life of the phone is determined by the ageing of the battery.
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> I don’t think I have ever seen a Motorola smartphone in the wild
Probably depends a lot on where you live tbh. Here in India it's moderately common. I think Europe and Latin America also have a fair amount of sales.
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I bought a Motorola phone (G Stylus 2025) while in the US after discovering my brand new Sony Xperia VII phone would not work in upstate NY.
It's a great device, I loved using it. It had features I specifically wanted (still has a 3.5mm jack, a microSD slot, and wireless charging). It also looks fantastic with their Pantone colours, and it feels more comfortable than my Xperia VII. There's a wired fast charge feature that is incredibly fast. The Motorola was just 25% of the price and it's as good as the Sony in almost every way.
I do remember one flaw, the compass (ie direction pointing in Google Maps) was terrible. I'd sometimes walk a block using Google Maps before finding the compass was leading me in the wrong direction. But GPS seemed fine, and data reception was sometimes better than my friend's iPhone in the same places. The selfie camera was excellent, though something about the rear camera I wasn't quite as happy about. The Stylus is nice to have, but honestly I don't use it as much as I thought I would.
I wish there were more Motorola phones in Australia, I've probably become a Motorola / Lenovo customer now. (I already use a Lenovo ThinkPad).
For reference, my previous phones have been iPhone, Google, Samsung, Sony, now Motorola.
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I remember when they were briefly owned by Google (I think) and assembled the MotoX in the US so you could buy a bamboo or customized case. It had one of the first low power always listening CPUs to listen for you to say Ok Google. Once that didn't work out Lenovo bought them and they had decent but not many flagship midrange phones. Moving forward a phone with decent security running grapheneOS that isn't a Pixel sounds good especially considering how other manufacturers such as OnePlus are embracing AI integrations. I think a number of people get sold on Apple devices based on their purported security so this collab could bolster some sales, let's hope they make it work and keep it open. I'd buy another one especially if I could get a bamboo case.
I still have 2 Motorola phones here. One > 12y old and one even older. The > 12y old one can still be used for calls and maps and so on, is just a bit slow these days. The even older one would be painfully slow and probably only able to use 1 or 2 apps at a time, but I am using it as a music player. Both phones still just work. Based on this Motorola seems to have made great phone hardware.
My last experience with them was with the Original first gen moto G. which was a brilliant phone. But of course it's been a while.
Before the iphone came and all the android uniformity, i used to use motorolla phones a lot and they were excellent. If the quality is still the same, with GrapheneOS they are going to have an excellent product.
You're mixing up 2 different companies descended from the original Motorola. Motorola Solutions is an entirely different company from Motorola Mobility with different owners. GrapheneOS is working with the company owned by Lenovo.
Could this be a road to getting GrapheneOS approved under Play Integrity (for contactless payments, etc)?
Maybe, probably not.
One thing that bothers me is the seeming lack of transparency about who is running GrapheneOS. Daniel Micay supposedly stepped down, so who is calling the shots now? Who runs the CI? Who owns the update servers and signing keys? Who am I trusting?
The directors of the the GrapheneOS Foundation and the other things you're talking about are public information. I stepped down as lead developer due to relentless harassment preventing me from being productive. The same people targeting me with harassment misrepresented what was happening.
You shouldn't get info about GrapheneOS from Hacker News comments especially when multiple regulars here are part of the attacks on GrapheneOS. Hacker News permits people to freely engage in libel and harassment towards me on nearly every post about GrapheneOS.
Even after Motorola announces a partnership you're still out here throwing mud. Not a good look.
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+1 This complete lack of transparency is the same gripe I have with the Signal Foundation.
FWIW, https://ised-isde.canada.ca/cc/lgcy/fdrlCrpDtls.html?p=0&cor... lists three directors for the GrapheneOS Foundation: Khalykbek Yelshibekov, Daniel Micay, and Dmytro Mukhomor.
How so wrt Signal?
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What I find particularity odd is that on their donation page [1], Daniel Micay's personal Github account is linked as a donation option (using Github sponsors).
(I opted to donate via bank transfer instead, because that is at least addressed at the GrapheneOS Foundation, not one specific member.)
[1] https://grapheneos.org/donate
They also have an overly reactive social media presence, somewhat similar to what ffmpeg has. Could end up being bad PR for Motorola.
Funnily enough that same social media person has some odd ideas about trust and PKIs.
Daniel Micay is still running the project despite announcing he'd step down a while ago. You can see the entire team on their Github
The directors of the the GrapheneOS Foundation and the other things you're talking about are public information. I stepped down as lead developer due to relentless harassment preventing me from being productive. The same people targeting me with harassment misrepresented what was happening.
You shouldn't get info about GrapheneOS from Hacker News comments especially when multiple regulars here are part of the attacks on GrapheneOS. Hacker News permits people to freely engage in libel and harassment towards me on nearly every post about GrapheneOS.
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For what I understood is that he's just stepped down as lead developer.
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The motorola phones are neat, especially razr's, but practically disposable with their dismal update support lasting in some cases only a year or a major version I'd read. Selling me a $1500usd flip phone that is practically disposable oob for updates is a non-starter.
Now put GrapheneOS on it with better support than the vendor can provide, now that's highly appealing. I wanted to get a used pixel 9 pro xl to update my old pro 6 and run graphene on, but pixel 9xl have defective screens on whole, so maybe not, and with Graphene divesting from pixel hardware now, maybe this is the way.
Motorola Signature (2026) has 7 years of support. It's a subset of Motorola's future devices in 2027 and later which are going to support GrapheneOS since the current ones in 2026 didn't quite meet all of the requirements yet. The intent has never been to support their existing devices but rather for future devices to provide everything needed and official GrapheneOS support. There's a lot of work to do. Meeting all of our requirements on low-end devices is currently unrealistic but can be a goal further down the road.
grapheneos has a hard requirement for the vendor to provide software support for 6+ years (iirc), so i expect the updates will be better even for stock users
however this might be only for their new Motorola Signature line of flagships...
Our official requirement is 5 years of support meeting our standards but it will be raised to 7 at some point. The Motorola Signature (2026) already has 7 years of support but it's future devices which are going to meet all our requirements and provide official GrapheneOS support.
Hmm the one thing I'm kinda missing with grapheneos is mobile payments. The banks here in Europe used to have their own nfc apps but in my country they've all moved to Google wallet :( or Samsung pay.
I don't want Google monitoring my payments so I'm using Samsung now but I'd love to have something more open for this.
I was kinda hoping the partner would be Samsung so they might collaborate on a payment system too. I don't think Motorola has anything like that.
If this partnership with motorolla becomes a success, samsung will follow as will the chinese.
Motorola phones are Chinese, aren't they? They mention being a Lenovo company in the article.
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If you're in Europe you can use Curve Pay, PayPal and multiple banks which haven't moved to Google Pay. Alternatively, pay in cash if you want privacy.
PayPal's tap-to-pay also works without Google Wallet (and therefore on GrapheneOS). It isn't any more open than Samsung Pay though.
With the adoption of Wero that should stop being a problem. As long as your bank app works on GrapheneOS.
Wero makes it worse not better.
With wero you must have play integrity and you can't even have developer mode turned on which is frankly ridiculous. I don't know of a single app that requires that. Source: https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us/articles/25599098295...
They had a great opportunity to make an ecosystem not dependent on google and apple and they utterly failed. You can't even log into it on the web, you must use the app.
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I was hoping more banks would introduce support for U2F. In Europe ING was one of the first if not the first, but so far few followed.
That's for logging into the app. What I mean is using NFC for payments.
I have ING but they also moved away from supplying their own NFC payments in favour of using Google Play, sadly.
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Curve works on GrapheneOS. I use it weekly.
Oh thanks, that one I didn't know, I'll have a look at it.
It seems to be European too which is another big plus.
Not all banks like Open Bank. Works on GrapheneOS
But can you pay over NFC without having google play installed?
> I don't want Google monitoring my payments
If you don't want Google monitoring your payment you shouldn't use mobile payments. In fact you shouldn't even use cards, because those likely have agreements with Google for data sharing. If you're serious, it's simple, just use cash.
Mobile payments used to work without any interference from Google through a bank's own implementation of the wireless payment protocols. On iPhone you got stuck with Apple's system (they restricted their NFC stack so competitors couldn't do this) but most phones were paying wirelessly without Google ever seeing a transaction.
Over the years banks phased out their NFC support and all moved to Google Wallet on Android, I think the last bank finished their transition a year and a half ago. A real shame.
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Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45585869
(At the time it wasn't public which OEM GrapheneOS would partner with.)
This is good. Having an alternative to Pixel-Phones for GOS makes sense. I wonder if we will have the option to buy a Motorola phone with GOS out of the box (not sure if i would trust that, but it might be interesting for some people that are skeptical of installing it on their Pixel by themselves).
AFAIK you can verify the integrity of an existing GrapheneOS installation.
Indeed you can: https://grapheneos.org/install/web#verifying-installation
This is a good step for users wanting more options for GOS. Pre-installed choices could address worries about installation for those who aren't comfortable doing it themselves.
Same owner (Google/Alphabet): https://blog.google/company-news/inside-google/company-annou...
Was, they sold it on to Lenovo in 2014.
[ https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-comp... ]
Literally the first three words of the announcement that this submission is about are "Motorola, a Lenovo Company".
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Motorola was subsequently sold to Lenovo in 2014.
https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-comp...
Is that still up to date? On Motorola Mobility's Wikipedia page [1] it says
> [Motorola Mobility LLC] is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hong Kong based Chinese technology giant Lenovo.
Lenovo is a publicly traded company, and according to its shareholding structure report for 2025 [2] its main shareholder is Legend Holdings Corporation. (Lenovo is also listed as a subsidiary on Legend Holding Corporation's Wikipedia page [3].)
Legend Holding Corporation is again publicly traded, with all big shareholders being Chinese according to its 2024 annual report [4]. The biggest one is CAS Holdings with 30% of the shares.
The China Academy of Sciences is owned by the Chinese government.
So it seems like if Google still owns part of Motorola Mobility, it's not a main shareholder.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility
[2] https://investor.lenovo.com/en/ir/shareholding.php
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_Holdings
[4] https://www.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2025/0429/2...
Google sold the company to Lenovo in 2014
Cunningham's Law in full effect!
No it's not. Google sold Motorola to Lenovo like a decade ago.
They sold Motorola to Lenovo in 2014
Only for two years: https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-comp...
Didn't you read the article? It's kinda hard to miss the Lenovo all through the press release.
Motorola is a lenovo company.
Atleast in the former moto Phone I had, even its boot sequence included the logo of motorola and then saying, a lenovo company.
It was a google company before 2014 but it was sold in 2014.
No, Lenovo owns Motorola
Google owned it 2012-2014
I was going to ask wasn't motorola bought and sold so many times that it ended up in Chinese hands. It ended up in Google's hands instead... Ngl, kind of underwhelming from Graphene
Edit: wait, that's old news, it is part of Lenovo...
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Bought a 2nd hand Pixel 8 just yesterday specifically to tinker with GrapheneOS. When there is a phone sold with GrapheneOS pre-installed (and assume with no restrictions I don't want and good reviews) I'll probably be in the market for it.
Back in the days, I switched from Iphone 3G to Motorola Defy in order to benefit from more customisation. I'm now back into Apple ecosystem since iPhone 6, actually on iPhone 13 but i'm very tempted by GrapheneOS. Going back to Motorola would please me, as I loved this little Defy. Do you think there's any chance to have RCS messages without Google involved ? I want group messages without having to install Whatsapp and not all my contacts are on signal.
> I want group messages without having to install ...
Well now I'm confused. I've always received SMS as fallback when my contacts add me to RCS group messages. But apparently this doesn't always work according to people on the internet at large?
Unfortunately most people still think they're "texting" and have no idea Google and Apple pulled a bait and switch. Meanwhile on my end I receive emoji react spam, each emoji as an independent message, in an incredibly verbose form that quotes the entire message.
It's simultaneously misleading people, a DoS against non-BigTech clients, and monopolistic. The mobile ecosystem just keeps getting worse and there's no sign of regulations fixing it any time soon.
It's supposed to work by downgrading everyone involved if any are not on RCS, because there is no other option. Which has been working fine for me at least, normal MMS issues aside (MMS delivery is often awful). RCS keeps an "is X using RCS?" list on their servers, and every attempt to message someone checks that (with a local cache)... and like >99% of those servers are Google, at this point, so it should be pretty consistent.
That said, I have no idea how often that fails in practice.
And that is how reactions are sent in SMS/MMS. Your app just isn't recognizing them to display them nicely. Maybe try a different one?
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An alternative, open and freely accessible OS for mobile computing is always good for a healthy market. Most of us have a limited view of the global market and don't know which areas prefer de-Googled OSs. If all of India or Africa decided to ditch Google, it would be a massive shift. We cannot forecast if the West will slowly decide to move to other solutions inspired by tech-savvy users or by becoming more privacy-conscious. It will take time, but desktop Linux is also slowly growing.
Motorola if you're reading this remove Glance from your Android 16 on lower end phones it breaks the phone. I'm sure you have some deal with them, but you have control over technical failures that render the device unable to function.
I really hope that the partnership involves support for low-end devices and not only high-end ones. Would be great to have a €200 Phone running GrapheneOS (e.g. G56)
I guess it's rathet hard to satisfy GrapheneOS requirements in 200 bucks budget. Things like at least 5 years of updates.
That's already required if you want to sell the device in the EU (or EEA?) at all. So far, Motorola hasn't left the market with their low-end devices so I presume they intend to deliver on the updates
Also requires a pretty new/high-end CPU for MTE and a separate secure enclave.
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Will the sandboxed google play permit banking apps to work using TPM and secured credentials?
Is it even possible to store secure credentials properly?
I would expect whatever you initialised before grapheneOS is wiped before you can run the alternate OS.
Is termux possible with a root/sudo function?
> Will the sandboxed google play permit banking apps to work using TPM and secured credentials?
Apps that don't work don't fail due to technical reasons but because upstream says so, i.e. Google Wallet. My banking app works just fine.
> I would expect whatever you initialised before grapheneOS is wiped before you can run the alternate OS.
Yes.
> Is termux possible with a root/sudo function?
GOS doesn't support root by itself since they deem it a security risk, but it's possible.
My banking app works fine on GrapheneOS today, but not every banking app does. If it depends on Google Play Integrity with strong integrity it won't because Google has successfully sold the blatant anti-competitive lie that you need to vendor lock-in your users to their OS to get security on mobile.
Secured credentials work fine, everything works fine except stuff that by design is locked in to Google like Google Pay.
And if a bank does this, tell them that they can do remote attestation for GrapheneOS phones as well:
https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
I don't think GrapheneOS team would partner with a vendor unless their security/usability standards were met (considering how long it took since the initial announcement) so I'm expecting feature parity with Pixel variants.
I'm just really curious if this phone is going to pass Google's conformance tests and whatnot. I feel like some of that is incompatible with GrapheneOS's security model, so I wonder what's going to happen there.
I think most banking apps already do work on GrapheneOS (not sure about TPM/secured credentials though). Graphene IIRC keeps a compatibility list somewhere. Some don't work, of course, but more do than I would have expected.
For me, the big question is if Google Wallet & its NFC payments will work. They don't on GrapheneOS currently, but if Motorola plans for this to be a fully Google-certified phone with GApps and everything, it will have to, somehow.
https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
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No, grapheneOS fails both DEVICE_INTEGRITY and STRONG_INTEGRITY checks.
By default. It can be mitigated.
So what does this mean? Are they going to ship GrapheneOS by default? Or just making it easier for GrapheneOS to support Motorola phones?
A subset of their future devices will meet all of the official requirements for GrapheneOS and provide official support for using it. They may sell devices with it but that would be a separate announcement.
I assume Graphene is goning to be an option next to the default google-cerfified Android. Like Fairphone ships e/os as an option.
Excited for this, GrapheneOS teased this a few months back. I might finally move away from iOS.
Nice. Got pretty depressed with the state of the world after the articles about police in Spain profiling Google Pixel users with Graphene as drug dealers [0]. Some proper "mainstream" recognition could do a lot here.
[0] https://www.androidauthority.com/why-i-use-grapheneos-on-pix...
I'd bet there is a huge market for a cheaper phone with GrapheneOS support. Lots of people in Europe and India right now looking to decouple.
Yup, I'm one of those. I'm not paying 700 for a phone I rarely use anyway.
It is finally a time to replace laptops with phones and laptop like docking stations. With hardware prices you'll save on buying twice, keep all your stuff in one device etc. That is what any disrupting company should head for.
Give me a graphene os phone moto, my money will be yours.
The misspelling of "GrapehenOS" in the tags below the article does not bode well for Motorola... :)
How about replaceable batteries?
EU regulation on that should come into force in Feb 2027.
You sure? I only heard of laws about repairability, not swappable batteries. You can already replace the battery of any phone, the only question is if it'll take you 1 minute (Fairphone) or several hours (every other vendor I'm aware of). The legislation might make it take maybe 1 hour instead of 2, and requires (iirc) that you can obtain legit replacement parts for a few years, but that's about it
Seeing how Motorola is trying to bypass the regulation for software updates, I don't have any hopes. https://www.androidauthority.com/motorola-eu-software-update...
That regulation doesn't apply to mobile devices at this point afaik.
I would buy a cheap Moto with GOS in a heartbeat
Oh that's awesome. Finally the contradiction of buying Google to avoid Google has been resolved for GOS.
I am curious to know how Motorola intents to deal with Google's policies surrounding Android forks, but I'm sure that's a hurdle they know how to cross.
Hau to hack
Hopefully wireless payment do work on these, and they have face unlock working. That's really the 2 issues I have with grapheneos.
I know it's supposed to be for privacy nerd, and they will tell you you shouldn't use Google pay because it's bad for privacy and so on... But it's not the majority of people, most are willing to trade some privacy for convenience.
Here it's Google not wanting to certify GrapheneOS I think, despite their valuable contributions to the AOSP.
Motorola might be able to help here since they would be signing for their own hardware?
In Germany, Paypal uses NFC payments. It works on GrapheneOS
I'd be more concerned for face unlock. You take an OS that goes to the extreme to prevent any external intrusion to your phone and you enable an option to unlock it for anyone by holding the phone to your face?
You can use other contactless payments apps like Curve Pay. It requires Google Play services but with limited permissions. It takes a bit of setup but many people are using it.
Wireless payments skipping Google Wallet work just fine on GOS.
Google Pay only works on device/OS combos that have the specific blessing from Google. Only google can make it work.
I'm so happy about that - out of all the vendors possible. And congratulations to the future users of the OEM Motorola users - You're going to get your security patches FAST.
(not muted my the fact that apparently no one else wanted to reach the high bar for system security)
This is good news. I use a Motorola device and feel it was the best (or at least the least troublesome) among the PRC based brands. Clean UI that's near pure Android..
If they can offer it as choice then hopefully banking apps etc wont get knocked off. And we can have best of both.
I hope that in they choose the same camera sensors pixels use. Hard to beat the processing gcam can do.
Motorola announces a phone for GrapheneOS then requires account for California devices, disables encryption for UK users, requires age checks for Australian users, etc, etc,
GrapheneOS is a separate thing from their own operating systems.
the best and most beautiful smartphone i ever owned was the motorola razr i.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_RAZR_i
it had a 4.3" display ... i think i'm coming
Alas that in the US it is seemingly impossible to get unlocked bootloaders now. I'm trying to figure out what couple-year-old international phone to buy now.
Good on Motorola. Incredibly smart to tap these passionate geniuses.
last phone I had was a motorola, you can unlock the bootloader but you have to make an account, give them the IMEI and request an unlock code. it probably has to be a carrier unlocked phone too. the latest motorola phones look to be the same way. pixels are afaik the only phones atm that you can just unlock without any fuss, so long as they were never used with verizon.
I once bought a oneplus phone to unlock the bootloader, they have the same process requiring an account etc, saying it could take up to 2 weeks to get the code. they never emailed it to me so I returned the phone.
Yes. And once you have the unlock code, you can re-lock the bootloader and unlock it as many times as you want to.
No idea about buying new phones but refurbished pixels with unlocked bootloaders seem to consistently be available from reputable sellers in the US.
It can be difficult to tell if the bootloader is unlocked from the listing though. There ought to be a legal requirement to clearly label that detail.
Really? That seems odd, where are you looking? Through your Carrier or just for unlocked devices? Depending on who you're with, usually you can just grab an unlocked device and your Carrier to register the device. I've only ever used Google Fi and AT&T though I'm not sure about the others.
Searching duckduckgo for 'Unlocked {device}' returns a lot of results on the shopping tab for phones on Amazon and eBay like the pixel 8/9 plus plenty of other "recent" android devices. Walmart and Bestbuy seem to still have dedicated sections for unlocked phones as well.
Motorola, the one company that still tries to evade the EU ecodesign regulations? Other vendors just provide the required 5+ years of updates, but Motorola loudly and publicity announced that they saw a loophole in the wording and would use it as an excuse to not provide updates for some models. This is despicable and worthy of a boycott.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/5-years-of-updates-Which-smartp...
"Operating system updates: From the date of end of placement on the market to at least 5 years after that date, manufacturers, importers, or authorised representatives shall, if they provide security updates, corrective updates, or functionality updates to an operating system, make such updates available at no cost for all units of a product model with the same operating system."
Motorola has committed to 7 years of support for the 2026 variants of the devices which will provide GrapheneOS support in 2027. There's still a lot of work to do in order to meet the GrapheneOS hardware requirements and there isn't going to be support for the existing devices. The whole point is they're working with us to improve their updates and hardware-based security features so that all our requirements are met. The stock OS is also a different thing than the official GrapheneOS support where we'll be making builds with their help. We'll be continuing to provide security preview patches and intend to move to newer kernel LTS branches than Qualcomm if they don't do it themselves.
GrapheneOS won't have to use their stock OS to get firmware, etc. as we do for Pixels.
Is this going to be cheaper than Pixel?
Cheaper than a Pixel 9a which goes for 349 Euro currently? Unlikely, since GrapheneOS will require a CPU with MTE and a separate secure element.
Congrats to Daniel and the team.
I was so much hoping it was Fairphone.
Fairphone is much further from meeting the requirements and have made it clear they're uninterested in providing proper updates or strong security. There will repeated official statements from the GrapheneOS project of Fairphone not being our OEM partner by clarifying it was a major OEM and that it specifically wasn't them. There's an article published at https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/24134-devices-lacking-stand... with details on how what they're providing isn't what they say it is.
Unfortunately fairphone has repeatedly shown they don't care about hardware security
I think "care" is too strong a word. They have limited resources and choose to focus on repairability and sustainability. That is different from not caring.
I hope Lenovo can add the auto call recording toggle in GrapheneOS.
/me stops buying Samsung and waits for next Motorola Flip
No handsets until at least 2027.
Chinese GrapheneOS is coming
Nokia 1101 is safer than all smartphones, just saying.
Wasn't that the model used to hack a banking app?
It's OnePlus all over again.
No, it doesn't resemble that at all.
Hope they make this partnership work out. Probably a 50-50 partnership.
GrapheneOS is a non-profit and it's not that kind of business partnership. We're getting a device with official GrapheneOS support out of it and they're getting increased device sales from having more secure devices with better updates and official GrapheneOS support. It's not an exclusive partnership but we aren't currently working with any other OEM and don't have the resources to handle multiple for quite a while anyway. They're going to get a lot out of being first.
India news channel hack
Why team up with a hardware manufacturer that is forced to comply with both the American Security Chip Act and the American Cloud Act?
I thought GrapheneOS was all about privacy and non compliance with Big Tech?
Would be interesting indeed to hear what the implications of what you bring up are. Anyone knowing enough to speculate?
So... Graphene on a completely Lenovo (Chinese)-owned Motorola Mobility saying they focus more on security than other EU/US vendors. Bold strategy.
you know there is a meme in Chinese netizens that they call Lenovo the sweetheart of US empire (美帝良心), the same thing that the same SKU was sold in America that is either cheaper than the equivalent in China or not even listed for
Many people will are reading this comment on completely Lenovo(Chinese)-owned Thinkpad laptop. If you are worried about devices made in/by Chinese then good luck. Personally i am now more worried about US corps feed my phone data to Palantir.
I'm calling out Graphene for dealing with a Chinese-owned company instead of US or Euro-owned vendor. There is a difference between manufacturing parts and components in China, and the entire design/development, production, assembly, and maintenance being owned by a Chinese-owned vendor.
Not to mention that by their actions Graphene are aiding an economic and political adversary develop more secure devices.
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Hardware manufacturers teaming up with and paying for open source software and operating systems is truly how I think we could escape enshittification.
Just give me the hardware and let me run good software on it that works with your hardware.
Motorola is now noted as a candidate for my next phone.
Now do Samsung
That would be entirely up to Samsung. It's not likely.
how safe is Chinese Lenovo with closed sourced firmware?
btw. Motorola has absolutely trash cameras, doubt GrapheneOS will change anything about it unless you put there gcam maybe, this is significant downgrade from Pixel cameras
btw. yes, it looks like vanilla Android, though it is not, my mother bought it after mine recommendation (previously used Xiaomi phones) and can't say the ROM would be particularly good
Pixel cameras are not about hardware, though, it's software. They infamously use stock Sony camera hardware and the same exact one for two or three consecutive Pixel generations. No reason for Motorola or anyone else get just as good.
Motorola Signature (2026) and Motorola Razr Fold (2026) are ranked one above the Pixel 10 Pro XL on https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/. It's 2027 and later devices which are relevant though.
> how safe is Chinese Lenovo with closed sourced firmware?
iPhones and Pixels are manufactured in China. Anything we could support is realistically going to be made in China right now.
It's planned for GrapheneOS to have access to the internal code including firmware. Supporting the subset of their future devices meeting the GrapheneOS requirements isn't going to work the same way supporting Pixels does.
> btw. Motorola has absolutely trash cameras, doubt GrapheneOS will change anything about it unless you put there gcam maybe, this is significant downgrade from Pixel cameras
Motorola Signature (2026) and Motorola Razr Fold (2026) are ranked one above the Pixel 10 Pro XL on https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/. It's 2027 and later devices which are relevant though.
> btw. yes, it looks like vanilla Android, though it is not, my mother bought it after mine recommendation (previously used Xiaomi phones) and can't say the ROM would be particularly good
There's no Android OEM shipping vanilla Android. Each one has their own forks of it. Vanilla Android doesn't include Google Mobile Services.
The stock OS is an entirely separate thing from GrapheneOS. Unlike Pixels, we won't need to use the stock OS to obtain firmware and other non-kernel device support code which isn't included in AOSP.
Cool, now we need an Android fork.
There are ones: - https://lineageos.org/ - https://grapheneos.org/
Yes, This is amazing.
My family had a moto phone and my god does it work till even now while being so snappy. I actually daily drove it for some time quite recently. It only has battery issues (let's hope that EU adds replacable batteries soon as well) and my mom only replaced the phone because she needed app which required the phone update.
Considering this partnership, To me it feels like Motorola can have the update issue be fixed.
Graphene was the reason I was thinking of buying a pixel phone second hand. Actually nope now, I am gonna wait for Motorola to ship GrapheneOS phone. I genuinely wish Motorola good luck for adding grapheneos.
I wish they can add Linux in future too but perhaps that might be asking them of TOO much but this company is probably hearing to the feedback if they have partnered up with grapheneos.
Actually, when I decided to buy my mother the new phone from her old Moto, I made a list and everything and I remember asking her about a new motorola but even me and her (iirc) both were worried about security updates and I saw online reviews/personal experience about software/android version updates being quite an issue which isn't an issue in for example pixel which has 10 years update policy iirc. With grapheneos now being partnered with moto, I do hope that it becomes an issue of the past.
They truly have the chance of becoming a good company for privacy savvy phone users while being affordable and having a good supply chain. I may be getting too excited but whoever thought of the deal must be a genius because I do think that if Motorola plays its cards right, then they definitely got a huge potential unlocked.
A while back I bought a Motorola phone (one of the Moto G-something series) for a family member because I used to have one and had a good experience with it.
I regretted that decision because soon that phone developed a bunch of warts that were a pretty obviously Motorola's idea to monetize their users. It was a constant source of problems. The peak was MotoApps that was constantly popping up with questions and installing random shit on the phone.
That pretty much put Motorola on my dont-buy list.
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I can find no evidence of this. Please do not post falsehoods.
why would there be evidence of sarcasm
jesus holy mary mother of christ AI bots dont understand sarcasm duh
downvotes away!
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Eww Lenovo. See what you made us do, Google/Trump2?
What?
eww lenovo -> lenovo owns motorola. lenovo is a trash company that ships shitware, even in their firmware, there is shitware
see what you made us do google -> this event is a direct result of google's rug pull of support for pixel devices
google/trump2 -> the current admin is linked to attempts to curtail people's control of their hardware
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Wait... so the supposedly most secure mobile OS will only be able to run on either a Google phone or a Chinese phone?
Yes, Motorola Phones is Chinese.
it's a subsidiary of Lenovo.
a lot of security minded people love their ThinkPads. out of all the chinese corpos, Lenovo is the one I distrust the least.
Doesn't matter to my point if security minded people love their ThinkPads. A lot of things that people love either irrational attachment to a brand, or habit or just copying the habits of those like you. Every time there's a security attack a lot of security people are victims too. They're not immune just because they have those jobs.
So they shaked hands with a long term NSA hardware contractor: https://www.motorolasolutions.com/newsroom/press-releases/na...
Fantastic. Very secure.
Motorola Mobility vs Motorola Solutions. Different companies. Different owners. Different nationalities.
Go ahead and trust them.
I won't.
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You're mixing up 2 different companies descended from the original Motorola. Motorola Solutions is an entirely different company from Motorola Mobility with different owners. GrapheneOS is working with the company owned by Lenovo.
Isn't this Lenovo, a different thing from Mororola Solutions?
edit: yeah it's a different Motorola. Unrelated companies in 2025. Android Motorola is owned by Lenovo, it's a Chinese brand