[HN Gopher] Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS
___________________________________________________________________
Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS
Author : km
Score : 2296 points
Date : 2026-03-02 06:48 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (motorolanews.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (motorolanews.com)
| duckerude wrote:
| Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45585869
|
| (At the time it wasn't public which OEM GrapheneOS would partner
| with.)
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| 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.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| 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.
| friedtofu wrote:
| 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.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| They are different kinds of unlocked! Unlocked generally just
| means "can be used with any carrier". For example this
| Samsung S22 I am on is "unlocked".
|
| But Samsung hasn't allowed unlocking the bootloader on their
| phones for many years. And they are far far from the only
| ones in that state.
|
| You basically have to research each specific phone far ahead
| of time. And beware! Because there's, for example, lots of
| guides telling you how to unlock my S22 phone. But as of
| ~2023 Samsung now blocks all those previous exploits that the
| unlocked software used to use.
|
| It's a mess and a half.
| friedtofu wrote:
| Eesh, that does sound rough. The last Samsung phone I owned
| was the Galaxy S5, I see on the Wikipedia page Samsung
| devices have been locked down since early 2021 :(
|
| Not like I would try to give you advice on unlocking your
| phone in the first place as I'm mostly clueless myself.
|
| Maybe time to trade up or sideways? Graphene OS only
| officially supports Google Pixel devices anyway(for now).
| If Motorola could somehow recapture the magic of the Razer
| today with a new phone, that would be cool too!
|
| https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices
| ikkun wrote:
| 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.
| precompute wrote:
| Yes. And once you have the unlock code, you can re-lock the
| bootloader and unlock it as many times as you want to.
| hrmtst93837 wrote:
| It's frustrating to see the bootloader situation in the US; it
| limits options for those of us who like to tinker. When
| considering older international models, ensure they have solid
| dev support for custom ROMs.
| jauntywundrkind wrote:
| I honestly am actually ok with stock! I just want magisk!
|
| My use case is pretty silly actually: I just want to be able
| to read my own Chrome session data! To do some "quantified
| self" exploration of how I use my device.
|
| But The War Against General Purpose Computing has marched on
| and on and on, and that has gotten harder and harder and
| harder! I can't explore my own device, can't see my own file-
| system, without root. Which generally requires unlocking the
| bootloader. The light & hackerly possibility, ongoingly being
| squeezed out of this world by tech titans and governments.
| Alas.
|
| Edit: it seems like half the things I use don't work with
| Magisk anymore either, even with hiding. What a horror show
| Google hath wrought against it's users. https://www.reddit.co
| m/r/Magisk/comments/1bsfxle/discussion_...
| Satuminus wrote:
| 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).
| zx8080 wrote:
| Same owner (Google/Alphabet): https://blog.google/company-
| news/inside-google/company-annou...
| phoronixrly wrote:
| 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...
| okanat wrote:
| It ended up in Chinese hands.
| 3nrico wrote:
| That article is fron 2012. According to wikipedia Motorola
| Mobility was then aquired by Lenovo in 2014, and Lenovo
| still ownes Motorla Mobility to this day.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| Thinkpads are also part of Lenovo and is technically
| Chinese. But see, which device is recommended for privacy
| purposes the most because of Libreboot/Coreboot and how
| much respected thinkpads are in the privacy minded
| community.
|
| Can't believe I am saying this but a chinese company can be
| good and an american company can be bad.
|
| Not an exact fan of china, especially their
| authoritarianism but I am not a fan of america right now
| either.
|
| For what its worth, a lot of American phone companies also
| use chinese factories or chinese components and assemble
| them in India or Vietnam (Apple) and then say that we are
| making phones in India which while true, isn't the most
| accurate picture but it keeps the masses happy.
| cromka wrote:
| Models recommended for Coreboot are old ones. You can't
| get it on newer ones or can't even edit the UEFI/ACPI
| tables on them because firmware is a) signed b) on SMD
| nvram making it pita to flash
| gib444 wrote:
| No, Lenovo owns Motorola
|
| Google owned it 2012-2014
| gertrunde wrote:
| Was, they sold it on to Lenovo in 2014.
|
| [ https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-
| comp... ]
| jakkos wrote:
| Google sold the company to Lenovo in 2014
| tim-kt wrote:
| Motorola was subsequently sold to Lenovo in 2014.
|
| https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/lenovo-
| comp...
| Youden wrote:
| 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.
| neumann wrote:
| They sold Motorola to Lenovo in 2014
| ItsHarper wrote:
| No it's not. Google sold Motorola to Lenovo like a decade
| ago.
| klausa wrote:
| Literally the first three words of the announcement that this
| submission is about are "Motorola, a Lenovo Company".
| doodlebugging wrote:
| That is four words.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Come on.
| klausa wrote:
| I was gonna be a smartass about how in my native language
| it would count as three words; but then I went and
| consulted Wikipedia and it was so dense with linguistics
| jargon I realized I actually have no idea what a "word"
| is.
|
| But the consensus seems to be that in English that would
| indeed count as four words ;P
| mhio wrote:
| Cunningham's Law in full effect!
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| 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.
| aniviacat wrote:
| 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/2025/042
| 9/2...
| hashworks wrote:
| AFAIK you can verify the integrity of an existing GrapheneOS
| installation.
| pferde wrote:
| Indeed you can: https://grapheneos.org/install/web#verifying-
| installation
| hrmtst93837 wrote:
| 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.
| anon5739483 wrote:
| 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.
| roysting wrote:
| > 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?
| user_7832 wrote:
| > 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.
| john_owl wrote:
| In Brazil it's very common, I had a few Motorola phones
| when I lived there. They have a great benefit-cost ratio.
| pferde wrote:
| I've had a Motorola smartphone for four years before moving
| on to a Pixel with GrapheneOS and was mostly satisfied with
| it, so this announcement sounds rather good to me. Can't
| wait for the product(s)!
| Aachen wrote:
| Netherlands. The only people I know with a Motorola phone
| are from overseas (either living overseas or moved here).
| Definitely more known in the anglosphere than in the
| Netherlands, but they're in stores and being sold, just not
| as strong a brand. Probably most people wouldn't know it,
| similar with e.g. Oppo
|
| When selecting a new phone, I always just put in the specs
| I want and then consider all options, so I have been aware
| that they're selling here but so far they never made the
| cut for me. I think the issue is usually that they're made
| for giants, or it's one of these screen curved edge devices
| that you can't pick up without touching something on the
| screen side
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Also Netherlands: I've seen quite a few Motorolas. Not
| their high-end phones, though, mostly mid-range phones.
| They don't seem to do a lot of advertising and don't have
| free watches/earbuds/accessories to give away with their
| phones so they don't create a lot of hype on the high-end
| market.
|
| My experience is that they provide decent hardware with
| clean software that doesn't get updates as often as you
| would hope. Most end users don't really seem to be all
| that interested in updates, though. They may not always
| be the fastest phones, but if they work for you, they
| will for years.
|
| That said, they do seem to provide long-term security
| updates for their more recent models: https://eprel.ec.eu
| ropa.eu/screen/product/smartphonestablets...
|
| They also make some pretty cool niche devices. Phones
| with massive batteries, for instance.
| Aachen wrote:
| The niche that draws me the most is the cheap segment.
| Now that we're moving towards a society where all sorts
| of vendors (including government) require code execution
| on a device with remote attestation of DRM (or attempts
| thereto), having a nonfree/untrusted secondary device for
| 200EUR with decent hardware and EU-mandated updates is
| pretty doable
|
| > don't have free watches/earbuds/accessories to give
| away with their phones so they don't create a lot of hype
|
| The times vendors shipped free e-waste are long gone in
| my experience. I don't think anyone selects a 400EUR
| phone based on getting 15EUR earphones with it, if you
| can even find one that still does this
| DerekL wrote:
| 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.
| maxloh wrote:
| Motorola Mobility is owned by the Chinese Lenovo, also a
| surveillance state IMO.
| roysting wrote:
| Yes, thank you. I was not aware of that. The impression I
| had was that they were divisions or business units of the
| same corporate entity. That being said though, even though
| some are concerned about the Chinese connection of Motorola
| Mobility, I would have far more concern about Motorola
| Solutions being the partner considering that "the Chinese
| surveillance state" is far more remote than the tyrannical
| impulses of our domestic governments sitting on our necks.
| linker3000 wrote:
| 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.
| omneity wrote:
| Or your willingness to put up with power banks.
| smeej wrote:
| That's a disappointing change. I had a Moto G Play a few
| years ago (the one where you could swap different modules
| on the back, like a projector and things), and its battery
| was really easy to replace.
| KurSix wrote:
| Yeah, this is one of the more frustrating industry-wide
| trends, and Motorola isn't alone in it
| SyneRyder wrote:
| 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.
| iamflimflam1 wrote:
| Direction pointing seems to be pretty bad in any built up
| area (on my iPhone and my wife's Pixel). I suspect that
| they are relying on accurate GPS for it combined with the
| magnetic compass. Both of which are a bit hit and miss when
| you are surrounded by tall steel framed buildings.
| summm wrote:
| Motorola omitted a magnetometer in some of their models.
| This was especially heinous as the "compass needle" can be
| emulated to some degree by fusion if gps and
| rotation/acceleration sensors, so the user wouldn't
| immediately notice the total lack of a compass. Since then
| I am always wary of what seemingly essential part of a
| phone they will omit this time...
| szszrk wrote:
| 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.
| backscratches wrote:
| Its frustrating that some motorola flagships dont do video
| out
| szszrk wrote:
| Exactly the catch I mentioned. This should be present by
| default on any model, especially that under the brand of
| Lenovo (also partialy by Motorola, as I understand) they
| sell ~250 phones meant for business while specifically
| targeting that functionality (with matching monitors, I
| think they can do some sort of monitor buil-in webcam
| sharing, even).
|
| Several phones downgraded in this regard, even going to
| usb2.0, like Fairphone :/
| gib444 wrote:
| > A year ago I got a "10 month old flagship" Moto,
|
| Model name?
| szszrk wrote:
| it's edge 50 ultra
|
| it's hilarious how this was considered by "youtubers" an
| outdated model when I was buying it.
| gib444 wrote:
| Thanks! Looks decent (60 Pro does too)
|
| > youtubers
|
| marketers ;)
| szszrk wrote:
| It is. I only wish it wasn't curved screen. It's a
| gimmick with no benefits and several negatives.
| 71bw wrote:
| It's because the 8sg3 is a terribly botched chip, to the
| point where it requires comically overengineered cooling
| to function properly.
| szszrk wrote:
| Yeah... and it's still a great cpu. What are consequences
| to the user? I failed to find a use case where it makes a
| sweat. It's insanely good price to value ratio.
| 71bw wrote:
| Battery life and thermal performance.
| szszrk wrote:
| Once again: are there any known problems that are not
| theoretical? I'm having 1,5 days+ with screen on time
| that I feel ashamed to admit, plus as I wrote before,
| never had it overheat despite gaming on external devices
| etc.
| timedude wrote:
| 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.
| haritha-j wrote:
| 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.
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| 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.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Ironic given that Lenovo is forced to comply with orders on
| the same level, of the same kind, as companies like Huawei
| and ZTE to name a few. With GOS' emphasis on security and
| privacy, is this not a concern at all? Or do you feel that
| between Lenovo and arseholes like Google, the feasible
| options are a case of choosing between plague or cholera?
| ignoramous wrote:
| Valid concerns. I must point out though, that if we are
| worried about hardware backdoors, then Zhengzhou, "the
| iPhone City", is also in China, even if Apple is in the
| US.
| daneel_w wrote:
| When it comes to telecom products I'm less worried,
| though not entirely content, with products that are
| developed in the West and manufactured in China, than
| products developed by the Chinese.
| robotbikes wrote:
| 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.
| yellowapple wrote:
| I was pretty happy with the Moto G7 Plus I bought a few years
| back; bought it specifically on the basis of "my OnePlus 5T
| broke and I need a LineageOS-compatible phone immediately",
| and it ended up fitting the bill perfectly. My only complaint
| was the smooth finish on the backplate, so it had a nasty
| tendency to slide off of any slightly-angled surface.
| daneel_w wrote:
| _> 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).
| vbezhenar wrote:
| 100% it's OEM, every chinese phone is built by some "you
| never heard about" company and later rebranded as Xiaomi or
| whatever.
|
| Does it matter though? With big enough leverage OEM will
| provide docs and will adapt hardware. That will cost extra,
| of course.
| daneel_w wrote:
| Of course it matters. Especially in GrapheneOS' context.
| lynndotpy wrote:
| Yep, this is my biggest takeaway from this. I've been Graphene
| only since 2020 to the point where I've scarcely considered any
| hardware outside its support range (which has effectively meant
| I've only kept up with Pixels).
| KurSix wrote:
| What's interesting about this announcement is that it implies
| actual cooperation instead of GrapheneOS having to reverse-
| engineer and work around OEM limitations. If Motorola is
| willing to provide proper hardware support, documentation, and
| not cripple things like verified boot or alternative OS
| installation, that's a completely different dynamic
| yencabulator wrote:
| [delayed]
| globemaster99 wrote:
| Hope they make this partnership work out. Probably a 50-50
| partnership.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| jackhalford wrote:
| Excited for this, GrapheneOS teased this a few months back. I
| might finally move away from iOS.
| siwatanejo wrote:
| /me stops buying Samsung and waits for next Motorola Flip
| 10729287 wrote:
| 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.
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > 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.
| Groxx wrote:
| 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?
| fc417fc802 wrote:
| > And that is how reactions are sent in SMS/MMS.
|
| Imagine if IRC clients started adding such functionality.
| Certain protocols and conventions are useful precisely
| because of their minimalism.
|
| Google and Apple are already running their own walled off
| proprietary messaging platforms. There was no need to
| tamper with SMS.
| Groxx wrote:
| I'm personally opposed to RCS (it's basically all Google
| / no real federation, horrifyingly complex because
| messages can have action buttons and whatnot, and DOES
| NOT have E2EE despite many implications for years - the
| newest spec this past year includes it, but nobody does
| it yet), but SMS and MMS are _so incredibly terrible_ for
| basically every purpose that I 'm entirely fine with
| attempting to replace it.
|
| But since RCS has become such a mess, and is so anti-
| competition (you can't make your own app, or servers), I
| think the answer is now extremely clear: don't use your
| telecom's messaging system at all, they are all by far
| the slowest, least reliable, and least private option.
| App-based messaging is better in almost all practical
| cases, and I think it's also a healthier future to head
| towards.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| afaik RCS does work but only with google services
| silisili wrote:
| 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.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| 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.
| mnmalst wrote:
| 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.
| b112 wrote:
| And the radio firmware.
|
| From a phone by a Chinese company.
|
| Unless GrapheneOS handles the radio firmware, not really
| interested.
| froh42 wrote:
| What's the difference compared to a phone with a radio
| firmware by a US company?
|
| In both cases it's something closed and the government
| has shown overreach. (Yes, China a lot more than the US,
| but still ... things are not looking good a the moment.
| And I have no more trust, even if the political direction
| changes for a presidency period or two.)
|
| But yes, ultimately we want open source firmware. Still,
| then there could be hardware backdoors anyways ...
| b112 wrote:
| I as a Canadian, lack trust too for the US these days.
|
| And there are indeed issues.
|
| Yet these issues are perhaps 1 foot high, and the issues
| with China and PRC's interference in domestic
| corporations, reaches to the moon.
|
| There's literally no comparison. Even now.
| backscratches wrote:
| I dont think grapheneos handles radio firmware on pixels,
| radios also not made in the US. I wonder if even apple
| does, as their radios are also not made in US.
| subscribed wrote:
| They address this issue specifically (don't have the
| links now, I'm sorry) - basically one of the "must haves"
| for the hardware to be considered good enough (meaning
| pixels have it and new motos will have it) is a hardware
| capability of the strict separation between the os and
| devices, ie baseband unable to influence the os
| (snoop/inject stuff, etc).
|
| Don't remember that at the moment, it should be one of
| the requirements they list under "future hardware" In the
| FAQ.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
|
| Aside from that, we'll have a lot more access to the code
| for firmware, etc. and ability to do hardening below the OS
| layer through the partnership with Motorola and their
| partnership with Qualcomm.
| bogeholm wrote:
| > firmware BLOBs
|
| Nitpick, but it's just 'blob' as in 'a big blob of bytes'.
| It's not an acronym or abbreviation for anything :)
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| Big bLob Of Bytes.
| dcminter wrote:
| In the database world a BLOB is a Binary Large OBject ...
| are you sure of your etymology?
|
| Edit: and I'm not btw - for all I know BLOB in DB land
| might be backronym from blob in the common usage.
| bogeholm wrote:
| Wikipedia lists exactly the two cases you mention [0]:
|
| > > Not to be confused with Binary large object (BLOB).
|
| > In the context of free and open-source software,
| proprietary software only available as a binary
| executable is referred to as a blob or binary blob.
|
| [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Binary_blob
| dcminter wrote:
| I hadn't read that page, but now I do I note that it
| says:
|
| _" The term blob was first used in database management
| systems to describe a collection of binary data stored as
| a single entity."_
|
| So I guess I'm not any clearer on this point.
|
| edit: If I had to bet on it then I'd put money on the
| theory that "blob" became "BLOB" to sound more technical
| though...
| kotaKat wrote:
| 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).
| iszomer wrote:
| Or when a 5.1 update borked LTE band 12 on my Moto E2.
| agile-gift0262 wrote:
| 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.
| pentae wrote:
| Still a bold move considering the increased malware on
| android devices vs ios. My parents would have their banking
| information stolen within 6 months
| dmos62 wrote:
| 70% of the world runs on Android. Do you think they get
| their banking information stolen every 6 months?
| pentae wrote:
| A quick search resulted in this: "Android malware saw a
| 67% increase in 2025, with over 40 million downloads of
| malicious apps targeting banking and stealing data,
| frequently hiding in "Tools" and utility apps on the
| Google Play Store."
|
| So no, I don't think that's a small amount of risk, even
| if there's billions of Android users in the wild.
|
| Especially considering how much money can be stolen from
| peoples bank accounts
| AlienRobot wrote:
| Much of this could be solved if the base system simply
| came with basic utilities.
|
| Windows XP had an audio recording app and most people
| didn't even have microphones. Now we have smartphones
| that don't have a way to record audio as a file or even
| write text notes built into the system, forcing you to
| use third-party tools that can be maliscious.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Comes with keep notes and the recorder app?
| mrguyorama wrote:
| Default installed apps are often carrier dependent.
|
| It is true that at certain points I have bought brand new
| Android phones that did not come with such basic
| utilities, including utilities that bargain priced
| feature phones were expected to have, like a sound
| recorder.
|
| IIRC, the Droid Turbo 2 I got in 2016ish came with
| Android 2 and did not come with a sound recording app
| stock. It also did not have a file browser stock. This
| was a Flagship product. The flashlight was not included
| for long enough for the top ten app, a flashlight app, to
| be on a significant quantity of android phones and end up
| being a data harvesting operation.
|
| https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-
| releases/2013/12/...
| monooso wrote:
| A source for your claim would be helpful. Here's an
| alternative take, with source:
|
| > In Q2 2025, the number of attacks involving malware,
| adware, and unwanted software decreased compared to Q1.
|
| https://securelist.com/malware-report-q2-2025-mobile-
| statist...
| malfist wrote:
| A 67% increase of a 0.001% chance is just 0.00167%.
|
| 67% of android users in 2025 did not get their banking
| credentials stolen.
| pentae wrote:
| I think you need to check your math there. 40 million
| devices in 2 billion is 2%. Not 0.001%
| tomrod wrote:
| Is the count 40 million devices or 40 million downloads?
| One imagines a world where malware downloads other
| malware.
| malfist wrote:
| Do people only ever download exactly one malware app?
| agile-gift0262 wrote:
| Luckily, they never install anything, and they send me a
| screenshot whenever they get a notification, email or SMS
| they didn't expect.
|
| Honestly, I do regret not having given them iPhones when
| they still had the cognitive ability to learn new user
| interfaces. iOS UI, on its most basic, default form, has
| remained stable except for cosmetic changes and the move
| away from the home button. Also UI is generally quite
| consistent between apps. Android on the other hand, keeps
| changing and varies wildly depending on the manufacturer
| and generation.
|
| Now it's too late for them to learn new UI paradigms, so
| I'm stuck with near-vanilla Android flavours.
| xmx98 wrote:
| These phones change your lock screen into their ,,content"
| screen after updates, so you need to periodically go to
| settings to undo it. Phone owners shouldn't have to root to
| permanently get rid of this stuff and other ,,suggestions".
| SockThief wrote:
| 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.
| julcol wrote:
| 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...
| joe_mamba wrote:
| According to Reddit, that Thinkphone seems to be an exception
| to Motorola's poor update reputation.
| joecool1029 wrote:
| > 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.
| mikae1 wrote:
| Two years? What has this world become... Come back in six
| years. :-D
| galangalalgol wrote:
| I think pixel phones get 7 years of updates now? That seems
| about right. If the battery doesn't go by then, the GPS
| does. It is weird to me that the gps fails first.
| daneel_w wrote:
| _> And Motorola is almost free of bloatware. It is
| practically a stock Android._
|
| My girlfriend had one of the Moto Play models from 2020 and
| it was horrific. Is their Android setup really any better
| these days?
| cptskippy wrote:
| I think it's highly dependent on the product line. My
| previous two phones were the Moto One which had very
| minimal bloat or customization.
| ggm wrote:
| 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?
| hashworks wrote:
| > 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.
| anon5739483 wrote:
| 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.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| ulrikrasmussen wrote:
| 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.
| microtonal wrote:
| 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...
| em-bee wrote:
| tell them how? the clerk in my local branch won't be able
| to do anything with that information.
| microtonal wrote:
| E-mail their support or technical department? I had some
| questions to my bank with regards to degoogled Android
| support and they just answered. Some banks have also
| fixed GrapheneOS support after customers asked.
| kelnos wrote:
| 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.
| shakna wrote:
| https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-
| gu...
| ggm wrote:
| MyGov is my governments portal. (I'm australian) I'd have
| to maintain another path to do tax, Medicare, related
| functions. This is an embuggerance.
| shakna wrote:
| And its only getting worse. The extreme push for myID
| everything, is really not helping the ecosystem of
| things.
|
| And on top of attestation, good luck if you've ever
| changed your legal name, in getting myID to behave at
| all.
| strcat wrote:
| You can keep your old phone around for it but they should
| solve the problem. Motorola can likely help us with
| getting it resolved once things are further along.
| Andromxda wrote:
| > Graphene IIRC keeps a compatibility list somewhere.
|
| This is the community-maintained banking app compatibility
| list: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-
| compa...
| goodpoint wrote:
| No, grapheneOS fails both DEVICE_INTEGRITY and STRONG_INTEGRITY
| checks.
| cromka wrote:
| By default. It can be mitigated.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| 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.
| avian wrote:
| 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.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| For context, I had the moto g5 plus/ maybe g5 phone. Those
| phones might be so old that the concept of ads didn't come
| whereas every phone we bought after that did have ads/came
| with prepackaged apps.
|
| So I may have had a rose tainted picture of Motorola and I
| didn't know this, Let's see what happens next tho. I can just
| hope that motorola stops with the ad and the motoapps that
| you are mentioning now that they are partnering up with
| graphene.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| 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.
| nhubbard wrote:
| I had never heard about this app. I thought the era of
| advertisements taking over the lock screen ended back in the
| Android 4.x days!
|
| But also, thinking from the business perspective, it's
| difficult to make phones meet such a low price point without
| either significantly compromising their performance or stuffing
| them full of ads to subsidize the price.
| ddtaylor wrote:
| I assumed it did something like that, but I honestly don't
| even know what it actually does, because the moment it gets
| loaded or anything like that the phone locks up and has to be
| manually reset using an obscure power button combination.
|
| To add insult to injury it re-installs the app if you remove
| it and re-enables the app if you disable it. This is done by
| the carrier/mfg specific application which cannot be removed.
| nunobrito wrote:
| So they shaked hands with a long term NSA hardware contractor:
| https://www.motorolasolutions.com/newsroom/press-releases/na...
|
| Fantastic. Very secure.
| karel-3d wrote:
| 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
| abhinavk wrote:
| Motorola Mobility vs Motorola Solutions. Different companies.
| Different owners. Different nationalities.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Go ahead and trust them.
|
| I won't.
| gf000 wrote:
| Then keep using your phone made from magic pixie dust,
| because we live in reality where you can't just grow out
| "the perfect" hardware company from a seed.
| nunobrito wrote:
| There are other Android distributions without suspicious
| funding sources that don't force you into google-owned
| hardware, nor give you as second option to jump directly
| into NSA hardware suppliers.
| karel-3d wrote:
| But they are not NSA hardware suppliers.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Yes, they are. Since decades now. DYOR.
| strcat wrote:
| No, you're mixing up entirely different companies.
| GrapheneOS is working with the Lenovo subsidiary.
| karel-3d wrote:
| It's a different company. They just share the same name.
| You don't do your research properly. This is a Chinese-
| owned company, part of Lenovo.
|
| (I mostly don't trust them because they are Chinese-
| owned, but then, everything is made either in China or by
| China-friendly Foxconn so, whatever.)
| omnimus wrote:
| I would like to know what kind of phone you are using.
| nunobrito wrote:
| At the moment this model:
| https://www.hotwav.com/products/hotwav-hyper-8-ultra-
| rugged-... with a modified Android based on LineageOS.
|
| Connects to the world using GSM and radio using
| satellites throught https://geogram.radio
| flexagoon wrote:
| So your solution is using a dropshipped phone from a
| sketchy no-name Chinese company?
| kotaKat wrote:
| And I'm sure that Mediatek chipset has already been pre-
| backdoored for access by the folks at
| Cellebrite/Greykey/etc :|
| nunobrito wrote:
| Now provide a reliable link for that claim.
| nunobrito wrote:
| Yes.
|
| You are arguing for absolute privacy, I am arguing for
| _more_ privacy than adopting well-known spyware devices.
|
| There is a difference.
| karel-3d wrote:
| It's a different, unrelated company. You don't trust it
| because of a shared logo?
|
| The mobile motorola is a fully Chinese company that just
| shares the brand because of history. It's nonsense to not
| trust it because a different company does NSA stuff. This
| is a basically unrelated Chinese company!
| nunobrito wrote:
| Very different. Oh so different.
|
| That argument worked suprisingly well with boomers. Those
| with access to the internet in the last 20 years will
| find absolutely zero difference when a company changes
| ownership on the surface while retaining the previous
| business links.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| hyfgfh wrote:
| How about replaceable batteries?
| patall wrote:
| EU regulation on that should come into force in Feb 2027.
| cromka wrote:
| That regulation doesn't apply to mobile devices at this point
| afaik.
| hurfdurf wrote:
| 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...
| Aachen wrote:
| 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
| phoronixrly wrote:
| So... Graphene on a completely Lenovo (Chinese)-owned Motorola
| Mobility saying they focus more on security than other EU/US
| vendors. Bold strategy.
| omnimus wrote:
| 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.
| phoronixrly wrote:
| 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.
| sfdlkj3jk342a wrote:
| What's wrong with a Chinese owned company? As someone who
| has no plans to step foot in China, I'd much rather be
| spied on by the Chinese than the US or EU.
| strcat wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Nearly the entire design and development process for
| European phone brands is done by Chinese ODM partners. It
| wouldn't be a positive to have a largely non-technical
| company between us and the company doing the technical
| work.
|
| Our partnership with Motorola Mobility isn't exclusive.
| Motorola Mobility are currently the only company both
| willing and able to meet our hardware requirements. We've
| talked to multiple smaller companies but they're currently
| unable to provide what we need.
|
| > Not to mention that by their actions Graphene are aiding
| an economic and political adversary develop more secure
| devices.
|
| GrapheneOS isn't based in the US and has no American
| directors but yet you're talking about it as if it's an
| American state-owned enterprise. It's the US which
| regularly threatens to destabilize and annex the country
| where we're based, not China. There's no Canadian or
| European company which is truly designing and building
| modern smartphones. We could have worked with a South
| Korean company if they had wanted to build a device with
| official GrapheneOS support instead of only improving their
| own OS.
| parag0ne wrote:
| Will you still be able to support Pixel phones for a
| while in tandem? I purposely bought a 9 Pro XL once I
| heard about your woes with the 10. Now I feel slightly
| obligated to buy the Motorola release to show my support.
|
| On a slightly unrelated note, many years ago you
| completely changed my viewpoints on security. This was
| before Copilot integration. May I ask if you still
| recommend Windows to pair with Graphene?
| strcat wrote:
| Pixels will continue to be supported until end-of-life.
| We still intend to add support for future Pixels too.
| Google is welcome to work with us to make that smoother.
|
| > May I ask if you still recommend Windows to pair with
| Graphene?
|
| I never recommended Windows. macOS on their latest
| hardware is the overall least bad out of the mainstream
| options (Windows, macOS, Fedora, Ubuntu, etc.). An iPhone
| or Pixel with GrapheneOS is far more secure than any of
| those.
| smj-edison wrote:
| What about Qubes? Or is it too much of a hassle that it
| ends up being a net negative for security? (For normal
| users, that is)
| totetsu wrote:
| The reason I was ever interested in a fully oss mobile
| operating system is because my economic and political
| adversaries are the owners the the tech companies no matter
| what country they are from.
| stevefan1999 wrote:
| you know there is a meme in Chinese netizens that they call
| Lenovo the sweetheart of US empire (Mei Di Liang Xin ), 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
| karlzt wrote:
| Is this going to be cheaper than Pixel?
| microtonal wrote:
| 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.
| madduci wrote:
| I really hope that the partnership involves support for low-end
| devices and not only high-end ones. Would be great to have a
| EUR200 Phone running GrapheneOS (e.g. G56)
| nie100sowny wrote:
| I guess it's rathet hard to satisfy GrapheneOS requirements in
| 200 bucks budget. Things like at least 5 years of updates.
| microtonal wrote:
| Also requires a pretty new/high-end CPU for MTE and a
| separate secure enclave.
| strcat wrote:
| The secure element can be on the same CPU die as Apple does
| with the SEP but a device with only TrustZone wouldn't meet
| the requirements. It also needs to be a high quality
| implementation providing the expected features.
| microtonal wrote:
| Thanks for the clarification!
| Aachen wrote:
| 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
| madduci wrote:
| Why? Some cheap smartphones are really powerful enough, the
| Software is bloated enough to feel sluggish
| nebalee wrote:
| Yes, please. It's a shame that privacy as a feature so often
| comes with a hefty price tag.
| madduci wrote:
| Perhaps EUR200 is too low as price, but I don't get why
| generally only flagships (900+) are considered the only
| citizens to get that support. I remember the time only
| OnePlus flagship phones got the best LineageOS support back
| then, while older, cheaper ones hadn't
| efreak wrote:
| Lineageos support depends on volunteers. If no volunteers
| have the device and nobody donated one to someone willing
| to do the work, then it doesn't happen.
| tonydav wrote:
| I hope Lenovo can add the auto call recording toggle in
| GrapheneOS.
| pu_pe wrote:
| 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.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| Yup, I'm one of those. I'm not paying 700 for a phone I rarely
| use anyway.
| atoav wrote:
| 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.
| maelito wrote:
| Cool, now we need an Android fork.
| zx8080 wrote:
| There are ones: - https://lineageos.org/ -
| https://grapheneos.org/
| brynet wrote:
| Congrats to Daniel and the team.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| 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.
| nie100sowny wrote:
| Here it's Google not wanting to certify GrapheneOS I think,
| despite their valuable contributions to the AOSP.
| cromka wrote:
| Motorola might be able to help here since they would be
| signing for their own hardware?
| preisschild wrote:
| Google Pay only works on device/OS combos that have the
| specific blessing from Google. Only google can make it work.
| SSLy wrote:
| Wireless payments skipping Google Wallet work just fine on GOS.
| omnimus wrote:
| 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.
| poisonborz wrote:
| 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?
| Andromxda wrote:
| GrapheneOS doesn't support face unlocking right now, but they
| have a useful two-factor unlock option that requires both a
| PIN, and biometrics (currently a fingerprint on Pixel
| devices) to unlock the device while in AFU. It also allows
| you at the same time to use a long passphrase in BFU.
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| well the thing is, i don't do anything illegal, i don't have
| much to hide and even if the police asked me to unlock my
| phone, i'd do it !
|
| What i don't like is having companies, google amongst others,
| siphoning my data and making money out of it, while offering
| in exchange a service that is becoming increasingly worst.
|
| grapheneos with it's enhanced permissions and profiles is
| pretty god at preventing these spyware from stealing all my
| data, for instance you can have give whatsapp limited contact
| permission and make it run in a secondary profile.
|
| face unlock is a tradeoff between security and convenience
| that i'd happily take ! But grapheneos doesn't give me that
| choice...
| dgrabla wrote:
| In Germany, Paypal uses NFC payments. It works on GrapheneOS
| velocity3230 wrote:
| I have NFC payments on GrapheneOS.
|
| The problem isn't the OS, it's the payment providers not
| providing support.
| pferde wrote:
| The misspelling of "GrapehenOS" in the tags below the article
| does not bode well for Motorola... :)
| Markoff wrote:
| 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
| cromka wrote:
| 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.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| cromka wrote:
| Nice, was not aware of that. Even better, means that
| GrapheneOS phone won't be some mid-tier thing that you have
| to suffer through because you really want that OS.
| strcat wrote:
| > 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.
| maxloh wrote:
| Made by China is a whole lot different than designed/compiled
| by China.
|
| Although iPhones are made by China, Apple is the one
| designing, quality-controlling and actually selling the
| device.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| 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.
| Tade0 wrote:
| 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.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| 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.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I checked and I can set one of my banks as the "default
| wallet app". I guess there are still some holdouts left.
| icar wrote:
| Curve works on GrapheneOS. I use it weekly.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| 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.
| mastermage wrote:
| I remember Curve being acused of some fishy things happening
| but I cannot tell you anymre which it was. So I am carefull
| with Curve.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| > 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.
| jeroenhd wrote:
| 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.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| > used to work without any interference from Google
|
| Google owns the operating system. If they want to see what
| the apps are doing, they can.
|
| This is like believing that Facebook can't read your
| whatsapp messages because they're E2E. They own the
| interface!
| aniviacat wrote:
| That's what GrapheneOS is for
| aniviacat wrote:
| PayPal's tap-to-pay also works without Google Wallet (and
| therefore on GrapheneOS). It isn't any more open than Samsung
| Pay though.
| timedude wrote:
| If this partnership with motorolla becomes a success, samsung
| will follow as will the chinese.
| ternwer wrote:
| Motorola phones are Chinese, aren't they? They mention being
| a Lenovo company in the article.
| amelius wrote:
| Yes, Motorola is a Chinese company.
| linhns wrote:
| This is a shame for the American old mobile phone
| industry. There was always potential in the brand and the
| phones they produce that deserved to be saved.
|
| Now hopefully Lenovo does it justice, unlike Thinkpad
| which they have milked and diluted everything out of.
| mastermage wrote:
| If Samsung gets support for Graphene I would be a happy man.
| stepri wrote:
| Not all banks like Open Bank. Works on GrapheneOS
| wolvoleo wrote:
| But can you pay over NFC without having google play
| installed?
| Maken wrote:
| With the adoption of Wero that should stop being a problem. As
| long as your bank app works on GrapheneOS.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| 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.
| flexagoon wrote:
| That's for the Wero wallet app specifically, no? I use
| iDEAL through my bank app and it works great, I'd assume it
| won't change with Wero since it's basically the same thing
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Wero extends iDeal in that it comes with its own
| app/wallet and user account service. A bit like Paypal.
|
| A step backwards, in my opinion. I'm not sure what this
| system adds that sharing an IBAN doesn't, but then again
| Tikkie's conquered that market pretty quickly for some
| reason as well and each bank has had to copy that feature
| individually.
| microtonal wrote:
| If you click on a specific bank on the Wero app page, for
| many banks it will just redirect to the bank's app.
| flexagoon wrote:
| https://support.wero-wallet.eu/hc/en-us
|
| There are separate sections for "Wero in your bank app"
| and "Wero in the Wero app", so I assume the Wero wallet
| won't be mandatory
| jeroenhd wrote:
| My bank app scans Wero QR codes and works fine on a rooted
| custom ROM, maybe after dismissing a popup about weird
| software, as long as it's already custom and rooted at the
| time of setup.
|
| It would be a pain if your bank wouldn't provide direct
| Wero integration, though.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| padjo wrote:
| Curve Pay refused to give me an account on my Murena FP6 and
| no local bank offers contactless without google pay, so I'm
| stuck using a bank card like a caveman.
| Andromxda wrote:
| > Curve Pay refused to give me an account on my Murena FP6
|
| That's probably because /e/OS uses microG, which is vastly
| inferior to Sandboxed Google Play on GrapheneOS, and has
| much worse app compatibility. You should also know that
| /e/OS is a highly insecure OS, and both Fairphone and
| Murena are constantly misleading their customers with false
| marketing and false promises.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| MicroG has two huge advantages: you can inspect the code
| it's running, and you're not tied to Google services. For
| example you can replace the location service with a
| privacy respecting one. With the sandboxed play you can't
| do that, you're stuck with the Google version. The only
| thing you still need Google for is the push
| notifications, because the backend of the apps only
| speaks to them.
|
| It would be amazing if grapheneos would support microG as
| an option. But they are too much "not invented here" for
| that to happen.
| Andromxda wrote:
| > you can inspect the code it's running
|
| That's only true for microG itself, not the Google blobs
| it needs to download and execute in order to function.
| GmsCompat on GrapheneOS is also fully open source.[1]
|
| > For example you can replace the location service with a
| privacy respecting one.
|
| GrapheneOS literally does that.[2] It's currently not
| perfect in regard to privacy because they are using
| Apple's Wi-Fi positioning service, but proxying it
| through their own servers, so Apple never gets the user's
| IP address or any unique identifiers, and link the
| location information to any other data. One thing Apple
| currently does better than most network location
| providers is the fact that they don't just return
| position data for one BSSID, they actually give you the
| data for hundreds of nearby BSSIDs as well[3], which is
| more private, and means that much fewer requests need to
| be made to the service.
|
| Because of this aforementioned aspect, Apple's Wi-Fi
| positioning system is also incredibly easy to scrape.
| GrapheneOS plans to build their own database, and let
| users download it, so Wi-Fi positioning could be
| performed fully locally.
|
| > It would be amazing if grapheneos would support microG
| as an option. But they are too much "not invented here"
| for that to happen.
|
| GrapheneOS doesn't support microG, because it has worse
| app compatibility than Sandboxed Google Play, and
| requires elevated privileges, unlike SGP.
|
| [1] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/platform_packages_apps_
| GmsComp...
|
| [2] https://grapheneos.org/features#network-location
|
| [3] https://github.com/acheong08/apple-corelocation-
| experiments
| ryukoposting wrote:
| > so I'm stuck using a bank card like a caveman.
|
| What is "caveman" about a payment method that doesn't need
| to have a charged battery?
| fragmede wrote:
| Cloning a mag strip is trivial, cloning a tap-to-pay tag
| a bit more complicated.
| padjo wrote:
| It was intended as a light hearted description of how it
| feels to use a marginally less convenient technology. I
| now have to ensure I have my bank card with me when I buy
| groceries which is a tiny bit annoying when you got used
| to just knowing your phone would cover most things.
| bgnn wrote:
| You cannot pay with cash in a lot of places in my European
| country. The number of no cash places is increasing by day.
|
| You can use your debit card though.
| Cider9986 wrote:
| Hate to break it to you, but 100s of third parties are privy to
| your exact payments including locations. Google could easily
| buy that information.
| tigrezno wrote:
| Yup, tried Graphene but went back to Android because of NFC
| payments.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| Using your phone instead of a plastic card is that important
| to you, at the cost of your privacy?
| mihalycsaba wrote:
| Yes. Until we can use our palms to pay like they do in
| China. I lost too many cards when I was still using them.
| drnick1 wrote:
| If you don't want your payments to be tracked you need to use
| cash or crypto. Otherwise, just use a credit card. I really
| don't see how unlocking a phone is easier or more convenient
| than using a credit card.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| The watch is on my wrist, or the phone is already in my hand.
| The credit card is buried in a wallet that needs to be taken
| out of and put back into a pocket.
|
| Also "unlocking" isn't an inconvenient step, on iPhone it
| just happens automatically. As it should on android if the
| fingerprint sensor is in a convenient location.
| tenthirtyam wrote:
| Umm, assuming you have the same opinion as grandparent
| comment, you don't want google tracking your payments but
| you'll happily trust google's pinky promise about your
| fingerprint being stored only on the phone?
| n8cpdx wrote:
| I'm not commenting on the security/privacy. Only the
| convenience. And I find tap to pay extraordinarily
| convenient - a significant upgrade over the plastic card.
| drnick1 wrote:
| Strapping your card to your phone in one of those
| magnetic card wallets seems to achieve the same level of
| convenience, or close, and avoids all of the downsides of
| running a Googled system.
|
| I personally find using a plastic card more convenient
| than fumbling for my phone and unlocking it (I don't use
| biometric unlocking as it's not protected by the 5th.)
| It's also easier to go somewhere without a phone (yes,
| it's possible) when you have a card on hand.
| troyvit wrote:
| > The credit card is buried in a wallet that needs to be
| taken out of and put back into a pocket.
|
| It's a good work-out. Almost as tough as pouring a can of
| soda into a glass. You'll feel the difference after just a
| week!
| squibonpig wrote:
| Im on graphene right now and this was an issue, but a ten
| dollar sticky card wallet on the back of the phone made it
| identical.
| rpunkfu wrote:
| Ease of use is, unfortunately, exactly what Apple and
| Google request your data for in exchange.
|
| There are wallets like ridge that I use for NFC with card,
| there're also phone cases with card holders. It's not like
| there's no solution to this problem..
| echelon_musk wrote:
| No handsets until at least 2027.
| kopirgan wrote:
| 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.
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| 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?
| rand846633 wrote:
| Would be interesting indeed to hear what the implications of
| what you bring up are. Anyone knowing enough to speculate?
| em-bee wrote:
| _a hardware manufacturer that is forced to comply with both the
| American Security Chip Act and the American Cloud Act_
|
| are google's pixel phones not subject to that?
| subscribed wrote:
| 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)
| BatteryMountain wrote:
| 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.
| CodeCompost wrote:
| Wat would be the compelling argument for middle managers who
| only think of meeting financial targets?
| zelphirkalt wrote:
| 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.
| xandrius wrote:
| 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.
| fsflover wrote:
| Why not postmarketOS or Mobian?
| tim-- wrote:
| 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.
| dns_snek wrote:
| 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...
| tim-- wrote:
| I 100% agree. It should have just happened 12 or 24 months
| ago. It's not too late, and there is a chance to capture
| some market, but it is late. If Motorola did this last
| year, I think they could have captured 10-20% market share.
| Their share will be reduced because the people who did care
| for long term updates have upgraded. Now they get 4+ years
| of updates because of Android.
| https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb
|
| This is a power move on Motorola's side, and I'm here for
| it.
|
| There are conditions for OEM's installing any of the Google
| services. Although, so far it seems that graphene have been
| able to work around them (although, this is not a world I
| traverse).
|
| I don't think the standard Android user wants to install
| ReVanced. They don't care about custom OS's. They want
| support and updates.
|
| I remember the dark times where you purchased hardware, and
| you would be lucky to get 4 years of updates.
|
| Motorola/Lenovo are late to this game. Two years ago,
| people updated to phones with phones that would get monthly
| security updates for five years. This was new to the
| Android ecosystem two years ago (with the exception of
| maybe a few Pixel phones).
| Arch-TK wrote:
| GrapheneOS currently doesn't ship Play Store or Services
| OOTB. They install as normal apps (albeit with GrapheneOS
| providing support code to make the fact that these things
| use/expose custom privileged APIs work correctly). I don't
| know if the Google TOS would prohibit that, at least I am
| not aware of any enforcement action against GrapheneOS in
| this regard. GrapheneOS also doesn't have Google's
| blessing, meaning some apps like Google Pay won't work on
| it. To get this, you need to apply to be an OEM.
|
| Really Motorola doesn't need to sell a GOS phone. Motorola
| just need to sell a phone with the right hardware security
| features, open source/upstream their Android/Linux patches,
| and give users the ability to run GOS.
|
| Hopefully they can then give you the option to buy one with
| GOS preinstalled, but even if they don't. It will be
| sufficient that it can run GOS.
|
| Unlike Windows, nobody feels they're paying an inherent tax
| when buying a stock Android phone. I'm sure nobody will
| mind.
|
| The hard part will be actually supporting the phone for
| long enough.
|
| GOS is reliant on Google's open sourced Pixel android
| releases up to and including the 9 series. This is because
| GOS doesn't have the resources to handle that entire side
| of things. But I guess part of that is also that GOS
| doesn't have access to the necessary information to do that
| stuff properly either.
| dns_snek wrote:
| That's fair, this would still be a valuable development
| even if Motorola doesn't end up shipping devices with
| GrapheneOS preinstalled, but _if they did_ I think there
| 's a lot of potential for them to enter the mainstream. A
| device with GrapheneOS without any [major] caveats (like
| Play Integrity API, Google Pay not working) would be a
| game changer.
| Arch-TK wrote:
| I can't see such a GrapheneOS existing without explicit
| Google support. And I don't think Google would support
| something like that unless they suddenly decided to
| actually not be evil again.
| summm wrote:
| 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?
| dns_snek wrote:
| I looked into this and it seems like Motorola is coming up
| with a contrived interpretation of the ecodesign regulation
| (EU reg. 2023/1670, annex II, "Design for reliability").
|
| Specifically they seem to be interpreting this to mean that
| they only need to make the update available (i.e.
| downloadable) for 5 years _iff_ they release an update.
|
| > (a) 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;
|
| However recital 7 makes the intent crystal clear:
|
| > It is currently not possible, or extremely difficult, for
| the owners of mobile phones, including smartphones, and
| tablets to change the operating system of their device,
| which is chosen and maintained by the manufacturer through
| regular updates. Such updates generally lead to the
| establishment of a range of major and minor versions.
| Updates may be used to ensure the continued security of a
| device, to correct errors in the operating system or to
| offer new functionalities to users. They may be offered
| voluntarily or might be required to be offered by Union
| law.
|
| > In order to improve the reliability of devices,
| therefore, it needs to be ensured that users keep receiving
| such updates for a minimum period of time and at no cost,
| including for a period after the manufacturer stops selling
| the relevant product model. Such updates should be offered
| either as updates to the latest available operating system
| version that has to be installable on the device, or as
| updates to the operating system version that was installed
| on the product model at the moment of the end of placement
| on the market, or subsequent versions.
|
| They're not getting any points for this, it's anti-consumer
| and makes a mockery of the law, but I don't think it's an
| actual loophole and they'll be punished for it if they
| don't comply.
|
| However all other OEMs are acting equally poorly in other
| areas so this really shouldn't be the reason for anyone to
| pass on GOS-powered Motorola devices, especially since this
| is the one area that's ~guaranteed to be completely
| different in partnership with GrapheneOS.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| isqueiros wrote:
| I'm just hoping they make figuring out contactless payments a
| priority.
| wisplike wrote:
| Curve pay works great btw!
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| UnreachableCode wrote:
| >Contactless payments already work on GrapheneOS via Curve
| Pay
|
| Are you sure about this? It was my understanding that NFC
| passes for gyms and stuff worked, but that if you want to
| pay for something with Google or Curve, you're shit outta
| luck
| uyzstvqs wrote:
| It depends on how the payment app works. Android provides
| a native Contactless Payments API which can be used by
| any wallet app. This is local to the device and works
| flawlessly on GrapheneOS as well. You can set your
| preferred wallet app for this feature under NFC settings.
|
| Google Pay/Wallet is one of the wallet apps using this
| API. If you use Google Pay, you set it as your preferred
| wallet app, and Google will act as an intermediary
| between you and whatever payment method you've configured
| in Google Wallet. It's this Google Pay app that's broken.
|
| Banking, payment and wallet apps that implement the
| Contactless Payments API work normally as they should.
| But, some banks have lazy developers, and just hyperlink
| you to add your card to Google Wallet instead.
| prmoustache wrote:
| The issue is banks being lazy and using google wallet
| instead of their own app. My bank used to allow me to use
| NFC to pay directly, then after merger with another bank
| the only option that was left was using google wallet.
| Andromxda wrote:
| > Are you sure about this? It was my understanding that
| NFC passes for gyms and stuff worked
|
| This is only true for Google Wallet. It can be used as a
| normal wallet app for stuff like plane tickets, etc., but
| Google Pay requires the OS to be specifically whitelisted
| by Google. This is an incredibly anti-competitive move
| aimed at supporting Google's monopoly by deliberately
| disabling functionality on alternative (including much
| more secure) operating systems like GrapheneOS under the
| guise of security.
|
| Curve Pay works fine on GrapheneOS, there's even an
| article by a community member talking about it:
| https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2025/06/contactless-payments-
| with-g...
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Is Curve Pay going to sell my data to someone?
| Andromxda wrote:
| Definitely wouldn't be unheard of in the Fintech
| industry. But I don't know, because I don't use the
| service. My bank thankfully offers their own
| implementation of NFC payments within their own app, so I
| don't need to rely on any third-party services. Many
| banks in Europe actually do this. Here's a German article
| about Google-free mobile payments on GrapheneOS:
| https://www.kuketz-blog.de/nfc-datenschutzfreundlich-
| bezahle...
| fph wrote:
| I paid for my lunch with Curve Pay on GrapheneOS today.
| WarmWash wrote:
| Google isn't letting anyone else get on their platform,
| because it's the exact reason why they got ruled a monopoly
| and Apple wasn't.
|
| If you let competitors on your platform, you must also let
| them compete on your platform. If you don't let them on
| your platform, well then they can kick rocks.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| People have been saying that because it's such an
| outrageous dichotomy, but it's also not really what
| happened in those cases.
|
| To begin with Epic picked a disadvantageous test case
| because mobile is only ~6% of Fortnite with the large
| majority on PCs and consoles. So when Apple banned it on
| iOS, most of the iOS users just bought their Fortnite
| stuff on their PCs and consoles instead and Apple could
| say "see? not a monopoly" which got them a market
| definition that included Google Play. The market
| definition is about the single most important thing in
| antitrust cases.
|
| But it wasn't really Google Play that people were
| switching to after Apple banned them and that could turn
| out a lot different for apps primarily used on mobile
| rather than trying to go after a mobile company over an
| app primarily used on consoles. _That_ was the main
| reason Epic lost against Apple -- Epic had an app where
| people would actually switch to something other than iOS
| and Apple had enough evidence of that to convince the
| judge.
|
| In principle that could have been the case for Google
| too, but they got a different judge, a jury trial instead
| of having the judge decide the facts, a correspondingly
| different market definition, and then it went the other
| way.
|
| What confuses people is that Google partially got in
| trouble for things like forcing third party OEMs to
| install Google Play on the home screen of their Android
| devices, which is not a good look, whereas Apple isn't
| forcing third party OEMs to do anything because they
| don't have any third party OEMs. But the thing they got
| in trouble for wasn't _having_ third party OEMs, it was
| strongarming them, which is obviously not the same thing.
|
| And -- this is probably the most important part --
| locking down the device isn't what gets you out of a
| market definition of "aftermarket for customers of that
| OS". It was more that Apple presented evidence that
| customers would actually switch to alternatives
| _specifically in the case of Fortnite_ and their judge
| bought that but a jury in a different case didn 't.
|
| If anything the lesson for Google here should be to _not_
| strongarm third parties, because that 's plausibly what
| pissed off the jury. And I'd be interested to see a case
| against Apple where the plaintiff is doing >50% of their
| business with iOS users instead of a single digit
| percentage, i.e. the ones where they actually have market
| power, though of course you then have the irony that
| those are the ones most afraid to bring the case.
| Iolaum wrote:
| Didn't know about curve pay - thanks for mentioning them.
| Will have to test them out!
| pamcake wrote:
| Consider contributing to the continued existence of cash by
| using it.
| bambax wrote:
| 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.
| chasil wrote:
| Lenovo abused their BIOS many years ago in such a way that it
| would load malware when it detected NTFS.
|
| I hope that behavior is long over.
|
| https://www.theregister.com/2015/08/12/lenovo_firmware_nasty.
| ..
| jorvi wrote:
| Motorola devices are terrible due to Motorola's update
| policy. Usually only 1-2 new Android versions max and then
| 2-3 years of quarterly security updates.
|
| For this GrapheneOS partnership to work, Graphene would need
| enough control of the software stack to offer around 7 years
| of updates.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| 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.
| raffael_de wrote:
| and a 4 to 5 inch display ...
| coldpie wrote:
| They do make one with a 4" display! I'm a small phone liker.
| After spending years on an iPhone 13 Mini and wishing it was
| a little smaller, I got a Motorola Razr Ultra last year and
| I've been very happy with it. It has a fully functional 4"
| external display, and unfolds into a full-size
| smartphone/phablet display for when you need it. I use the
| little external display probably 80% of the time, but it's
| handy to unfold when you need it for Maps or something. I
| know it sounds wacky to have a foldable phone, I was nervous
| about it too, but give it a look. It's actually really cool.
| rubzah wrote:
| Flip phone user for five years, will never get a slab
| again. It's weird to me more people don't use them, I guess
| they're expensive still.
| ileonichwiesz wrote:
| Have you been using the _same_ foldable phone for those 5
| years? It's the price, but it's also a question of
| durability.
| lawn wrote:
| If Motorola releases a flip phone with GrapheneOS I'll
| order it on day one. I wanted one the last time I
| upgraded but I wanted GrapheneOS and there's no flip
| Pixel (only a foldable).
| neya wrote:
| 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.
| pbasista wrote:
| No one suggests that open and developers-friendly phones
| should be expensive.
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| A good chunk of cheap hardware is subsidized by ads and
| data sales.
| neya wrote:
| I agree, but they always will be expensive because they are
| a niche. Same reasoning as phones that focus on one niche
| (like photo/videographers) always end up being super
| expensive (eg. Xperia from Sony).
| qmarchi wrote:
| Disclaimer: Niche Xperia User.
|
| Not necessarily, the Xperia line of devices is varied,
| with nice set of tiers:
|
| 1 - Flagship $$$$ 5 - Smaller Flagship $$$ 10 - Mainline
| $$ Ace - $
|
| Sony's problem is that they have garbage marketing teams
| that don't understand that 99% of people don't look at a
| spec sheet, they ask the employee at the shop for the
| best phone, which is gunna be the one that gets the
| employee the most commission.
|
| In Japan, they already have that with Docomo, AU, and
| Softbank. But they've failed to materialize that strategy
| outside of here.
| kube-system wrote:
| Right, it's the economics of mass production that does
| that.
| scrollop wrote:
| 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.
| oblio wrote:
| How many is many? Fairly sure hardware development is very
| hard and expensive. Are we talking about 1 million people
| worldwide (peanuts, will probably not recover the
| investment) or 50 million worldwide (might be worth it)?
| regularfry wrote:
| I think you're an order of magnitude out. Motorola
| shipped 36.6 million handsets total across 2024. They
| seem to have had 33 handset models available in that
| period, and they were in profit, so the break-even point
| is presumably somewhere below 1.1M handsets.
| oblio wrote:
| If I'm off for the second group I'm probably also off for
| the first one. I'd be surprised if a purely privacy
| focused phone sells more than 200k units per year.
| j_maffe wrote:
| If that were true then the Windows phones would've
| survived. You need the app ecosystem.
| raincole wrote:
| 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.
| RobotToaster wrote:
| 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.
| LtWorf wrote:
| As long as the banking apps and such work.
| coldtea wrote:
| Banks shouldn't have custom apps that are not mobile
| websites, accessible via the mobile browser just as well.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Apparently there are special auth apps storing things in
| secure-enclave-ish parts of the OS. Not a great match for
| websites.
| cogman10 wrote:
| No, that's just BS.
|
| The web has a secure storage standard and OAuth + MFA is
| just as secure as anything your bank could cook up in an
| app. In fact, I'd be shocked if banks did a better job of
| security in their apps vs what browsers and standard auth
| flows provide.
|
| Banks just like selling the idea that "if it's encrypted,
| it's secure". But trust me when I say this, bank security
| across the board absolutely sucks. The company I work
| with does financial data ingest and... yeah... There's
| more than a few institutions where we had to pull teeth
| to get them to send stuff through an encrypted transport
| (SFTP, for example, they want to just use FTP).
| coldtea wrote:
| The OS/browser could give this capability to web apps via
| an API.
| j_maffe wrote:
| That would be a breeding ground for malware.
| LtWorf wrote:
| You mean like the android play store already is?
| coldtea wrote:
| The capability to ...read their own keys that they set
| up?
| fsflover wrote:
| When my bank didn't support my phone, I switched the
| bank, not the phone.
| LtWorf wrote:
| That is sensible. In sweden there's 1 single app to
| authenticate yourself. Strictly speaking the bank does
| work without, but A LOT of other stuff doesn't, making
| life very hard.
| fsflover wrote:
| Perhaps you can't get the freedom without fighting for
| it?
| LtWorf wrote:
| People do need to rent apartments and such things, it
| gets cold in sweden.
| antiframe wrote:
| I think they meant that if there is a single identity app
| you should petition your government to require it to run
| on any mobile phone rather than require one or two
| American companies to dictate what it can run on. Or
| better yet, allow people without mobile phones to also be
| able to rent apartments.
| krs_ wrote:
| BankID was working just fine when I was experimenting
| with LineageOS without Google apps (incidentally, on a
| Motorola phone) last year. It is something I worry about
| though, seeing as they could easily stop that from
| working and there's no real alternative.
| RobGR wrote:
| This could develop into a chance for a crypto wallet to
| shine.
| repelsteeltje wrote:
| > [..] 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.
| realusername wrote:
| 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.
| bayindirh wrote:
| 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.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> boots paradox_
|
| For those that don't know what they meant, here you go[0].
|
| I've always been a fan of Quality, but Quality costs, and
| people that get rich, generally do so, by selling lots of
| lower-quality stuff. Hard to compete against.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Excellent info and article. I'd not heard of this
| paradox, but I've always told my kids, "If you have to
| spend more to get quality, go for it." I will say though,
| if I won't be using a product very often, but still need
| it, I will buy something at a lower cost/quality.
| coldtea wrote:
| > _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_
|
| Would it? Most people, including in the developing
| countries, like changing phones. It's one of the small
| consumerist joys they get, plus they show the Joneses that
| they can keep up.
| rcxdude wrote:
| This is easier if the device retains its resale value.
| Keeping up with the latest iphone is cheaper than the
| latest Android flagship because of this.
| em-bee wrote:
| the biggest threat to long term usage of a phone to me
| are physical damage or loss. buying a cheaper phone
| reduces that risk. if a phone lasts more than two years i
| count my blessings.
| toast0 wrote:
| Changing a phone means days of annoyance as you find one
| more thing that didn't transfer. Or one more thing that
| doesn't work the same as the old phone, but not in a good
| way. Or one more thing that you have to dive deep into
| settings to express that you do actually want your
| communication apps to run in the background so you can
| communicate. Or one more pocket the new phone doesn't fit
| into. More annoyance if you had to change phones because
| the old one can no longer accept input.
|
| I remember a time when a new phone meant exciting new
| capabilities, and my current phone does have a new radio
| vs the old phone which is nicer than I thought it would
| be ... but at the end of the day, it's pretty much the
| same but different. Even though there are approximately
| 10,000 android phones released per year (hyperbole, I
| think), only a handful have my must haves (appropriate
| bands, headphone jack, reasonable cpu) so I don't
| actually get to shop on my want to haves; there's not so
| much joy there.
| rcxdude wrote:
| This is one of the advantages apple currently has: Staying
| on the bleeding edge of or buying an iphone is cheaper than
| you would think, because iphones in general retain their
| value longer than the average android, due to apple's
| relatively long OS update period (and yes, it would be
| better if they were more open and less control freaky, but
| they still beat their competition). And even the android
| brands that do have competitive support periods lose out
| due to the brand confusion.
| kvemkon wrote:
| > apple's relatively long OS update period
|
| For a 127 EUR Samsung A17 up to 6 OS and security updates
| (6 years) are advertised. For a Google Pixel up to 7
| updates. How long is it for Apple?
| Noaidi wrote:
| I can barely use my iPhone 16E after the liquid glass
| update so I will say for me, it was one year.
| oarsinsync wrote:
| That's nuts. My iPhone 13 actually feels _quicker_ after
| the iOS 26 update (and this is the first time I think I
| 've said that about an iOS update since it was iPhoneOS /
| single digits)
| Noaidi wrote:
| Part of the issue with the 16E is that is is using a
| binned A18 chip. when I heard it was using the A18 chip I
| decided to buy it, but it seems the GPU sucks, and Glass
| is so GPU intensive so...
|
| https://www.macrumors.com/2025/02/21/iphone-16e-geekbench
| -bi...
|
| It was fine without liquid glass, but I unfortunately
| missed the downgrade window,
| bayindirh wrote:
| Apple provides 7 years of software updates, plus one year
| of security updates on top of it, plus zero day patches
| after that period.
| JohnTHaller wrote:
| Samsung will switch from monthly to updating less and
| less often over the age of your device. Your device will
| be vulnerable to known security issues but Samsung will
| stick to their once every 3 months and sometimes once
| every 6 months update schedule. I found this out after my
| premium Samsung tablet sat vulnerable for months.
|
| https://www.sammobile.com/samsung/samsung-galaxy-
| security-up...
| microtonal wrote:
| That's true, but for the price and compared to non-
| Samsung they are doing really well. Our daughter's A54,
| which was a bargain at 300 Euro, is still getting monthly
| updates after three years and looks like it's still
| getting them for at least another year (since A53 is also
| still supported).
|
| Though for price vs. updates it's hard to beat the Pixel
| 9a. It's currently often ~349 Euro and gets updates until
| April 1, 2032.
| g947o wrote:
| That may be a good argument 5 years ago but not today.
|
| An iPhone does not necessarily last longer than an
| (flagship) Android phone these days, including security
| updates.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| can you walk into a Samsung shop and have your battery
| replaced with an OEM part, warranties and all, in about
| two hours?
| g947o wrote:
| I don't think that's the topic being discussed here.
| microtonal wrote:
| _This is one of the advantages apple currently has:
| Staying on the bleeding edge of or buying an iphone is
| cheaper than you would think, because iphones in general
| retain their value longer than the average android_
|
| I have found that you can also use the less long value
| retention to your advantage by not buying an Android
| phone on release day. E.g. Pixels often go for hundreds
| off after 6 months or so. E.g. here in Western Europe,
| including VAT: Pixel 9a 549 -> 349, Pixel 10 899 -> 549,
| Pixel 10 Pro 1099 -> 769. At the same time the iPhone 17
| has only gone down about 100 Euro. When getting e.g. a
| Pixel at the discounted price, the loss is not so much
| after selling after 1-2 years.
|
| Also, I had a habit of getting a new iPhone every year
| and the loss of selling second-hand is now much larger
| than in the early days. I think the demand lessened due
| to the market largely reaching an equilibrium + there not
| being a lot of advances in smartphones, so people are
| staying on their phones longer, so there is less demand
| for second-hand phones (e.g. my parents were on iPhone 11
| until recently, my mom still is).
|
| The typical interested buyers are also more annoying to
| deal with these days (also probably due to the changing
| iPhone demographics). So nowadays, if I cannot sell it to
| family or friends, I'll often just send it to a company
| like Rebuy.
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| Samsung and pixels Almost match it. Something about
| !Phones it's outside of the us or in developed counties I
| might say they're expensive compared to android. The
| price difference between what they cost in the us and in
| other parts is a lot. When I came to the us that I
| realized that buying an !Phone is not that dumb, as here
| the price are reasonable, for example Samsungs phones
| cost the same.
| Frotag wrote:
| > if you enable battery changes, a current gen device can
| easily last a decade), people will care.
|
| Modern batteries last surprisingly long. I assumed my 5yo
| pixel 4a was at 50~60% capacity based on feels and the adb
| batterystats printout estimated the same (with 1600 charge
| cycles). But when I actually measured the screentime /
| charging wattage, it was still at 80% capacity. Even
| confirmed this by replacing the battery and running the
| same tests.
|
| I think part of the reason the old battery felt worse is
| that it would read 100% when it was only ~85% full then
| trickle charge at like 2w for another 90 minutes.
| Forgeties79 wrote:
| > $200 phone that you can use for 5+ years without
| handicapping the user will be a much bigger hit.
|
| Fairphone and framework devices are more expensive than
| their locked down competitors. Are there any open devices
| that come close to being that affordable without being
| years behind tech/feature wise?
|
| $200 for an open source, modern smartphone that can last
| sounds great. But it sounds like a bit of a fantasy right
| now.
| dangus wrote:
| I don't think this view is in line with the realities of
| the smartphone market.
|
| Some/many low end phones in on have replaceable batteries
| (e.g., Nokia C12). I'm not sure if it's because of buyer
| demographics, simpler/easier assembly, less engineering
| constraints due lower-end/less hardware, but the place you
| tend to find replaceable batteries is on the low end.
|
| The user is never really handicapped because low end users
| just continue using phones after they've lost security
| updates. All their apps still work and that's all they care
| about.
|
| In the mid to high end market, you've got two factors at
| play:
|
| 1. Many consumers actually _want_ the latest phone
| frequently so long as they can afford it, and for many
| customers in many markets it's a trivial expense (more on
| that in point #2)
|
| 2. Many of the higher profit locales like the United States
| have financing and pseudo-financing schemes that hide the
| cost of the phones. If you are using a post-paid plan on
| one of the big 3 carriers, you'll literally never pay for a
| phone. You can get a brand new $1000 phone on a trade in
| deal every three years, with a pseudo-contract lock-in
| (they give you the phone for free after bill credits, so if
| you leave the carrier you are paying for the phone. Or, in
| the case of AT&T, they just lock the phone until you pay it
| off).
|
| Even budget carriers like Metro and Boost have free phone
| offers involving low to mid-range phones.
| saltcured wrote:
| The cynic in me thinks Motorola somehow won't really enable
| that since it would cut into their recurring sales too
| much..?
|
| But, I agree. I used several Motorola phones and those were
| the main two reasons I replaced them. They either ran until
| the battery was misbehaving or I became concerned about the
| state of the software. The other reason would be actual
| tech changes such as LTE/5G and the transitional period
| where not all models supported all the important radio
| bands for my providers.
|
| A few Motos have stayed in the family and had amazingly
| long lives as home devices (no SIM). I'd love for the
| balance to somehow come out in favor of your hopes. I.e.
| they decde they can save so much on OS maintenance costs
| that they don't mind the effect of users holding onto
| phones longer.
| eaziym wrote:
| Interesting perspective -- thanks for sharing this.
| j-bos wrote:
| > [..] 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?
| neya wrote:
| I know where you're getting at, I wish modern phones had
| the headphone jack. It was the most stupidest decision to
| remove them. I now use an Apple USB-C to headphone jack
| converter, while the inbuilt DAC is really good, it's quite
| inconvenient as I'm an audiophile myself and if I take a
| different headphone with me to the gym, I can't use it if I
| forgot to bring the converter (which happens a lot).
| fwn wrote:
| _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.
| wink wrote:
| > 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.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| >> _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.
| Noaidi wrote:
| 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.
| evandrofisico wrote:
| They are probably going for a new thinkphone generation for
| the prosumer/enterprise and not for the consumer market.
| monegator wrote:
| > 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.
| tnel77 wrote:
| 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.
| Zak wrote:
| 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.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Why do you assume every "developer and tech nerd" cares
| about the things you do, or should? This is like the
| stereotypical buffoonish sysadmin who scoffs at people who
| don't mod their machines or configure every last bit of
| their OS by hand.
| Zak wrote:
| I expect most people to think it's bad if a corporation
| can keep them from running apps on their phone when those
| apps are good for the user and bad for the corporation.
| If most people don't understand that conflicts of
| interest lead to unethical behavior, that's a larger and
| more urgent social problem.
|
| I expect tech nerds to be aware that the conflict of
| interests exists in this case, while the average person
| would not.
| WorldMaker wrote:
| You can be aware of the conflict of interest and still
| decide that is an acceptable trade-off to make. Ethics
| are personal, subjective, and subject to trade-offs. You
| have a strong ethical support for having control of the
| apps running on your devices and that overrides other
| trade-offs. Another person may have competing ethical
| beliefs such as Google is an advertising company and
| while Android allows open software installation (today,
| at least), Google's conflicts of interest as an ad
| company are more concerning for the entire platform and
| larger ecosystem than Apple's conflicts of interest as an
| application gate keeper.
|
| There's no right answer, everything is a shade of gray.
| Your strongest ethics aren't necessarily your neighbors'.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > Google is an advertising company and while Android
| allows open software installation (today, at least),
| Google's conflicts of interest as an ad company are more
| concerning for the entire platform and larger ecosystem
| than Apple's conflicts of interest as an application gate
| keeper.
|
| This, I suspect is a large part of it. At least for me,
| as a self described "tech nerd" who have been messing
| with computers since my childhood in the 90s.
|
| The other aspect is that I don't do anything serious from
| my phone. I'm still "old school" I guess and prefer a
| keyboard + mouse. My laptop is my main computing device,
| not my phone. And for that, Apple currently offers the
| best of a bad situation. It's still advantageous to them
| from a marketing standpoint to offer privacy, and they
| aren't primarily an advertising company. They are the
| only one of the two that offer E2EE (Advanced Data
| Protection) for photos, all the processing for that is
| done on device, etc. When meta threw their huge fit over
| the app tracking transparency, but were silent on
| anything Google was doing with Android, that just sold
| Apple even more for me.
|
| I'v made a choice to accept the tradeoff of them being an
| application gate keeper because for anything "serious"
| I'd just be using my computer anyway, which still allows
| me to install and run whatever I want, and do whatever I
| want with the hardware. I don't need that from a phone.
| Quite the opposite, I don't want that on a phone, I'm
| totally fine with the phone just being an appliance, and
| Apple offers the best appliance experience still.
| lo_zamoyski wrote:
| > You can be aware of the conflict of interest and still
| decide that is an acceptable trade-off to make.
|
| Yes, here, you can talk about the relative merits of one
| piece of tech vs. another and compared with your personal
| needs. Of course, what is immoral is never permissible--
| it is nonsensical to speak of immorality otherwise--but
| there's nothing of the sort here. The behavior of the OP
| is a kind of moralizing rigorism, that is, the imposition
| of a personal concern on others that has no objective
| severity of the sort being claimed, as if his personal
| concerns here are morally binding on others.
|
| > Ethics are personal, subjective, and subject to trade-
| offs.
|
| Subjective, no. Morality (ethics is the study of
| morality) is objective, or it is nothing. Murder is evil
| not because I arbitrarily opine--with no objective basis
| whatever--that it is evil, but because it actually is
| evil, and to choose to commit it is a gravely immoral
| act.
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I don't think they have to reach the average consumer for
| this to work. The world is big, and while 99% probably
| could care less there are more than one reason to own an
| open source phone. If the lenovo hardware runs Android and
| Graphene, it's not like they have to make a big investment
| in it. And the Graphene users could give them some pricing
| power.
|
| If you are a phone manufacturer looking to differentiate
| your product, this is cheaper than inventing a display that
| folds four times or what have you.
| sho_hn wrote:
| > so many developers and other tech nerds - the type who
| post on HN
|
| The average developer stopped being a "tech nerd" around
| 2010 or so. I think older developers sometimes don't
| understand how the ranks have swollen and how many, many
| more people are in software now that don't have the "I was
| a nerdy kid in the 90s, loved computers and chose the
| career" upbringing.
|
| The average developer now has a MacBook, went to a bunch of
| bootcamps and writes TypeScript. Or enterprise Java if they
| got unlucky.
| rjbwork wrote:
| It's very evident when you work with the young juniors.
| I've seen people with CS degrees that don't know their
| keyboard shortcuts.
| DANmode wrote:
| I've got great news for you.
| Zak wrote:
| It's less surprising to me that a developer would choose
| a Macbook than an iPhone. You can have root on a Macbook
| and install software without permission from Apple
| (though I hear of late it may require using the command
| line).
|
| The hardware performance is outstanding, and while
| opinions are split about the OS, a lot of people who
| display good taste in other technical matters like it.
| I've chosen to spend my own money on a different laptop,
| but if someone offered me a high-spec Macbook Pro on the
| condition that I use it for a year, I'd accept.
| godelski wrote:
| I choose a Macbook because it's my terminal. I'm given
| the choice "Macbook" or "Windows laptop". I'm forced to
| use Microsoft products and they're actively hostile to
| Linux. My laptop is really just a glorified ssh machine,
| with a web browser, and corporate shovelware. Life is so
| much better in the terminal. Home is 192.168.1.0/24 and
| 100.64.0.0/10, it doesn't matter what screen I'm using.
| Home is where the ssh connection is.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| >I'm forced to use Microsoft products and they're
| actively hostile to Linux
|
| How so? Powershell has openSSH built in now, and WSL2
| basically works minus some annoying behavior and caveats.
| I have a Windows 11 laptop and I use it like you are
| saying as an ssh machine and web browser without much
| issue.
| godelski wrote:
| > WSL2 basically works minus some annoying behavior and
| caveats.
|
| It is a lot of annoying things. Everything is just so
| clunky and I don't think it is surprising given that it
| is a subsystem. At least in the mac I can still access
| the computer I'm typing on through the terminal. I mean
| yeah, I can do that with Winblows but it is non-native
| and clunky. I mean ever try to open a folder with a few
| hundred images in it? (outside the terminal) I didn't
| even know this was an issue that needed to be solved. For
| comparison, I can open a folder in the GUI of my linux
| machine that has 50k images (yay datasets) and in <1s I
| can load the previews. In my terminal, it is almost
| instant (yes, I can see the images in my terminal, and
| yes, it is this type of stuff that is a lot clunkier on
| Windows).
|
| And on top of that, as frustrating as OSX is (even as
| terrible as OSX26 is) Winblows is worse. OSX feels
| disconnected, but Winblows feels hostile.
| diacritical wrote:
| What setup do you use for seeing image previews (or the
| images themselves?) on a terminal in Linux?
| krs_ wrote:
| Not the original poster but possibly lsix[1], which
| looking at the readme should work in certain terminals on
| Windows as well but I haven't tried it.
|
| [1] https://github.com/hackerb9/lsix
| godelski wrote:
| I use yazi a fair amount but I've also configured fzf to
| do it. There's a lot of tools to view the images, chafa
| is a good one.
|
| This definitely should be improved but I honestly don't
| use fzf that much. I can fix it if you really need
| something but I'm sure you could find it in the docs or
| even an LLM could handle this. Requires you to define a
| few variables, lsd, bat, and chafa $ echo
| $FZF_DEFAULT_OPTS --ansi --preview "if file
| --mime-type {} | grep -qF image; then chafa --passthrough
| none -f sixels --size
| ${FZF_PREVIEW_COLUMNS}x${FZF_PREVIEW_LINES} {}; elif file
| --mime-type {} | grep -aF -e directory; then lsd --color
| always --icon always --almost-all --oneline --classify
| --long {}; elif file --mime-type {} | grep -aF -e binary;
| then strings {} | bat --color always --theme=Dracula
| --language c; elif file --mime-type {} | grep -aF -e text
| -e json -e empty; then bat --color always --theme=Dracula
| --style=numbers,grid --line-range :500 {}; fi"
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| Ok, I still don't see how that's "hostile to linux" and
| not just windows being crappy, which it is.
| godelski wrote:
| Because I didn't really speak about Microsoft's hostility
| to Linux.
|
| I think the moment it turned from annoyance to hate was
| when they bought Skype and then removed features from the
| Linux version. Features like... conference calling... but
| there's a million things like that. Go talk to Linux
| nerds and I'm sure you'll get a unique story each time.
| We've all felt the pressure
| bornfreddy wrote:
| IE. Enough said.
| dtj1123 wrote:
| I think they mean that Office products and the like
| aren't available on a Linux OS
| ray_v wrote:
| At _least_ you're not forced to use Microslop. But that's
| been a pretty common refrain from a lot of devs - the
| Macbook is the lesser of two evils.
| godelski wrote:
| I've been given a Winblows machine in the past. My boss
| thought he was doing me a favor because it was a powerful
| machine... Sorry... all I need is ssh...
| encom wrote:
| Why not just install Debian (or whatever) on it, instead
| of suffering Windows?
| godelski wrote:
| Because it was a work machine?
| encom wrote:
| Yes...? Didn't stop me before. Unless it's some locked
| down, domain-joined e-waste like I have now. Public
| sector IT policy _literally_ prevents me from doing
| certain tasks at my job, and makes others take four times
| as long. Not even my email works properly.
|
| Last job was a lot of SSH and webshit like Jira,
| Confluence, Odoo and Google apps. They didn't care if you
| used Amiga OS as long as your work got done.
| mmmlinux wrote:
| didn't stop you before but stopping you now real good
| sounds like. So, WhY dOnT YoU jUsT iNsTaLl It AnYwAy?
| encom wrote:
| Because our IT dept. is both incompetent and paranoid,
| which is an annoying combination. I keep my own X1 Carbon
| with Fedora in my backpack, because it's easier than
| arguing with them.
| DANmode wrote:
| > My boss thought he was doing me a favor because it was
| a powerful machine
|
| From folding@home to mining@work
| rangestransform wrote:
| I used to be a custom rom guy in high school, and I also
| used to develop apps for my nexus 5. Now I have an iPhone
| and I save the tech nerding for work hours. I definitely
| would not have gotten this far without my custom rom
| days, but now my phone just needs to do phone things so I
| can work on robots instead.
| mckenzba wrote:
| This. I was heavily involved with the Maemo community
| back in the day and even made an Ubuntu 9.04 port to the
| Nokia N800/N810. These days I'm juggling multiple
| responsibilities and I need to conserve my mental energy
| for work. I certainly credit my career on that tinkering,
| but these days I just want something that works so I can
| put my energy elsewhere.
| idiotsecant wrote:
| >I need to conserve my mental energy for work.
|
| Is perhaps the saddest sentence. Whats the point of
| working when you don't have enough energy left to do the
| fun stuff?
| thankyoufriend wrote:
| You might be reading into that too much. It's more likely
| that this person's definition of what is "fun" has
| changed since they were younger. Spending time with
| family/friends or engaging with new hobbies might be how
| they have fun now, and that's perfectly fine.
| encom wrote:
| Yea, messing with my computer isn't as fun for me as it
| once was. There's something screwy with my CPU cooler,
| and I've been putting off dealing with it for well over a
| year.
|
| I still wouldn't be caught dead with a Macbook - I do
| have some self respect.
| crubier wrote:
| Dealing with broken Linux installs might be your
| definition of fun, but it's very possible to be a nerd
| and not find that particular thing fun, and prefering
| Macbooks
| array_key_first wrote:
| Android phones do phone things. They work perfectly fine
| - in many ways better than iPhones, and in others not as
| well.
| godelski wrote:
| I switched to an iPhone more in an act to protest Google
| and I regret my decision. Things didn't get easier, they
| got harder.
|
| I mean for christ's sake, there's no universal gesture
| for "back". Do I swipe from the side? Press the x button
| at the top left? The top right? Is there no option I can
| find so I just force close the app? When I swipe to text
| with autocorrect turned off why does it change the word I
| swiped AND the word before it that was already correct?
| Why can't I swipe the word "racist"? Why can't I swipe
| the phrase "killed himself" and instead it "corrects" to
| "Lillies himself" or "milled himself"? (Made for a very
| awkward conversation about Turing...). Why can I swipe
| the word "suicide" but not "suicidal"? (These are phrases
| I've found to be easy to reproduce but it also happens
| with mundane everyday shit) Holy fucking shit how the
| fuck is this thing even a phone, it doesn't even do phone
| things well? I mean as far as I can tell there is no
| setting which will ever capitalize a singular "i", making
| it trivial to recognize an iphone user since well...
| iphones came out...
|
| Not only that, with things like Termux they just work
| better. Want to sync files to your computer? Easy, rsync.
| With a few lines in a bash script my phone does daily
| backups locally. With a few lines I have a script that
| means my phone is a keyboard for my computer. With a few
| lines I have I can turn my old phone into something
| useful instead of garbage. Maybe these things are tech
| nerdy to the average person and "too much work" but for
| us? Come on, this shit is trivial.
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Swipe up from the bottom (which goes to the app
| switcher), and then swipe up any app you want to force-
| quit.
| godelski wrote:
| Sorry, I definitely was unclear when angry writing this
| > Is there no option I can find so I just force close the
| app?
|
| I end up doing that a lot but it's honestly a bad
| solution that shouldn't have to be used
| badc0ffee wrote:
| I see, you can't find the way back so you quit the app in
| frustration. I get that
| array_key_first wrote:
| I switched from iPhone to Android and I was fully
| expecting a world of pain but I was (am?) pleasantly
| surprised.
|
| The back button thing is real. When I have to use someone
| else's iPhone I immediately feel the lack of consistency.
|
| And KDE Connect is fantastic to use. So many things on
| iPhones are just annoying for no reason. I don't want to
| buy a 1000 dollar computer to look at my photos, come on
| now.
| _-_-__-_-_- wrote:
| PhotoSync and LocalSend.
| godelski wrote:
| I'm not too big of a fan of KDE content but totally get
| why people use it.
|
| I do want to suggest you install termux, and do it from
| fdroid rather than the play store.
|
| I'm guessing you're on Wayland, so check out ydotool. (If
| still on x s/x/y) there's a lot of cool things to do with
| tools like that. Basic one is use your phone as a
| keyboard (like KDE connect can do, but I found it more
| reliable and KDEC doesn't play well with VPNs)
|
| I wrote a similar script in Apple Shortcuts and... wtf is
| this bullshit. My files backup Shortcut is even uglier.
| I'm incredibly impressed at the hacky shit I was forced
| to do just to backup photos... I almost would rather pay
| for an app that does it. I almost would rather learn how
| to write an iOS app. Just to... replace a 10 line bash
| script -__-
|
| Since I'm still not a big fan of Google my next phone is
| going to be a Pixel and I'll install Graphene on day 1.
| That is, unless something better comes out :)
| array_key_first wrote:
| I'll check out ydotool. I did a bunch of bullshit with
| shortcuts, too. I had one that would change my screen
| from grayscale to color when I opened the photos app. Of
| course it only worked, like, 80% of the time so that was
| great.
|
| I have a pixel 9a with Graphene right now and I'm very
| happy with it. Great hardware, great price, great
| software. The one blindspot is messaging, which is a big
| problem in the US. RCS doesn't work on Graphene, and SMS
| is basically the worst thing ever, so I use Signal as
| much as I can. I'm hoping one of these days RCS becomes
| an actual open standard with competing implementations
| but... I won't hold my breath.
| godelski wrote:
| That's good to hear about graphene. I've been able to get
| most of my friends to move to signal but yeah the walled
| gardens are annoying. Does graphene not support the same
| RCS that Google does?
|
| As for Android, I think the real magic happens when you
| just realize your phone is another computer and you can
| do normal computer things with it. It just starts
| unlocking so many doors. One thing I like to do is have
| my desktop sit behind my TV. Big screen for movies and
| games. For everything else, there's ssh. Your phone is
| just another terminal in that environment. But the modern
| version of a terminal means your local machine can
| actually do meaningful things too. Tbh, it's really what
| the big tech companies are doing too, they just pretend
| they aren't.
|
| Also, since you're new to Android check out revanced. I'm
| not sure if you need this on graphene but you can
| recompile apps. Mostly used for removing ads but there's
| more to it than that.
|
| I'm hoping one of these days we can just treat computers
| like computers. Stop creating these walled gardens. It
| really slows down innovation and honestly, I believe the
| big companies would make more money doing it. After all,
| their whole business sits on top of open source work. The
| computer is nothing without the program. The smart phone
| is nothing without the app. Why can't we recognize that
| the success of these machines is that they're
| environments. You can't create a product for everybody,
| but building environments doesn't have the same
| limitations
| idontwantthis wrote:
| I like iPhone and won't go back to android because I am
| comfortably using a 6 year old iPhone on the latest
| operating system with no real issues. Planning to keep
| using it until it stops getting security updates, or the
| hardware fails.
| windexh8er wrote:
| I think the assertion here is there are no Android phones
| that don't have long term support. Apple compared to
| Google Pixel phones are basically the same longevity
| today[0][1].
|
| With a lot of Android devices they'll have a lifespan
| even beyond that. Although there are choices to make at
| that point. You just don't have the option with Apple.
|
| [0] https://endoflife.date/iphone [1]
| https://endoflife.date/pixel
| idontwantthis wrote:
| In those lists iphones are supported up to 7 years old,
| while Pixels only go back 4 and they end security updates
| at the same time that they end OS updates. The most
| recent one says it will go 6 which will match my claim as
| of today, but I'm expecting to keep this one going for
| more than another year, and I'm expecting security
| updates to keep it usable for at least a few years after
| that.
| bikelang wrote:
| This is such an uncharitable take of your peers.
|
| The issue is not pedigree - it's that many folks have an
| incurious mind.
|
| I certainly know many folks with a CS degree that are
| incurious and frankly terrible engineers. I also know
| bootcampers that are extremely curious, have a lifelong-
| learner attitude, and are subsequently great engineers.
|
| There's nothing special taught in the vaunted halls of a
| CS undergrad that can't be trivially learned off YouTube.
| kid64 wrote:
| I agree with your first couple of sentences. But the
| YouTube bit is dangerous misinformation. You cannot match
| any credible university education by watching YouTube.
| bikelang wrote:
| There are many wonderful educational channels on YouTube.
| Just as in a classroom - you cannot passively absorb
| material and expect to understand it with any depth. You
| can absolutely get the same education off YouTube. The
| only advantage a proper course provides is pre-made
| structure. But even that is accessible to the motivated
| learner.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Back in the 90s, Macs were mostly used by the "tech
| nerds". Normal people ran windows 95/98. It's still kind
| of weird to me that Macs became sufficiently mainstream
| as to lose their tech nerd cred :)
| Aldipower wrote:
| My memories are different. Macs were run by media guys
| for graphics, video and audio. Tech nerds used, sure
| Windows, DOS, but also Linux already, many types of
| Unixes, Netware, Commodore Amiga, Atari ST or Falcon. But
| Macs? No!
| kid64 wrote:
| Exactly, Macs were more of a yuppie toy for people that
| didn't need real computers.
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Maybe "tech nerd" is being interpreted in a specific way
| that I don't quite follow. Are the multimedia guys with
| the expensive tech setups not nerdy enough?
| kortilla wrote:
| They were nerds but not computer nerds. "tech nerd" would
| be someone building computers, learning how to program a
| bit, war driving, etc
| swiftcoder wrote:
| Huh. For me "tech nerd" has always been more general, and
| encompassed the folks pushing the envelope in
| multimedia/games/home-automation, and so on
| dismalaf wrote:
| I was young but I do remember during the 90's my really
| nerdy computer/programmer friends being into Apple stuff
| until around the time Steve Jobs left, then getting into
| Unixes and eventually messing around with Linux or going
| back to Apple when they adopted a Unix base for OSX.
|
| My own experience was learning on an old IBM PC at
| school, then Apple 2s later. Also my dad was a programmer
| (but maybe less nerdy/more professional) so I got second
| hand x86 hardware and learned to program on Windows with
| Visual Basic, Delphi and Visual C++ (since he already had
| licenses). Eventually I got into Linux in the late 90's.
| Aldipower wrote:
| Yeah, that is correct, the early Apple computers were
| used by tech nerds too! I mainly referred to the 90s like
| the OP and to Macintosh computers.
| seniorThrowaway wrote:
| I'd say Macs have a far greater association with
| developers and tech nerds now, most code was being
| written for Windows and Unix back then. I was in a
| Computer Science University program in the 90's, and our
| labs were full of Unix workstations, things like SGI and
| Sun. When the iMac dropped, they put them in the non-CS
| labs. On a personal level, I've always felt the
| relatively current Mac==developer trend is driven in
| large part by fashion, but I've never been a fan of the
| Apple/Mac ecosystem even though I can respect what the
| Mac is on an engineering level. So maybe I'm biased.
| panick21_ wrote:
| I know plenty of tech nerds who have been Apple fans
| since the 80s.
| homarp wrote:
| on the Apple //e
| neya wrote:
| > writes TypeScript. Or enterprise Java if they got
| unlucky.
|
| I would argue writing TypeScript is also equally being
| unlucky (I write Elixir for a living, but sometimes have
| to deal with TypeScript too)
| endemic wrote:
| I don't think it's iPhone vs. Android, rather "mega-corp
| $$$" vs. hobbyists. At the point where Android could be
| considered "open" (e.g. removing Google Play Services,
| etc.) you've lost a lot of the functionality that people
| come to expect from a smartphone. Sure, there are
| workarounds, but let's be honest: they're hacky and not a
| great experience.
| Cider9986 wrote:
| It is a great experience without Google Play Services on
| GraheneOS.
| afavour wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I bought a Nexus One the day it became available, installed
| endless third party ROMs on it, tweaked it to my heart's
| desire. Got a Nexus 4, then 5. Today I have an iPhone.
|
| I just need something that works, just because I _can_
| tweak endlessly doesn 't mean it's a good use of my time.
| Honestly one of the original biggest motivators was
| iMessage. A rock solid messaging system ought to be table
| stakes for a mobile OS but Google has reinvented the wheel
| so many times I've lost track. Also FaceTime for calling
| distant relatives.
|
| Sad to say, I don't find myself missing the relative
| openness of Android at all. Google-branded Android has
| issues similar to iOS, they also removed ICE Watch style
| apps. And non-Google Android is work.
| Zak wrote:
| > _Also FaceTime for calling distant relatives._
|
| Are your relatives unable to install Signal or WhatsApp?
|
| Yes is a possible answer here, but installing a
| messaging/video-call app seems pretty low effort. I've
| had several elderly relatives do it and none required
| hand-holding, just the name of the app.
| afavour wrote:
| At the time neither WhatsApp nor Signal had iPad apps.
| Looking at it now it seems Signal added that in 2020,
| WhatsApp in 2025. But I switched years before both.
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| Even starting a FaceTime call is a struggle for lots of
| people.
|
| Installing an setting up Signal or WhatsApp is out of the
| question for a huge portion of the population.
| toast0 wrote:
| > Even starting a FaceTime call is a struggle for lots of
| people.
|
| Yes, 90% of global smartphone users can't do it at all :P
| j_maffe wrote:
| > WhatsApp is out of the question for a huge portion of
| the population.
|
| What an insane take this is.
| Copernicron wrote:
| How is it an insane take? My mother is in her seventies,
| has an iphone, and can't seem to figure out how to put me
| on speakerphone when I call her. It's a struggle to get
| her to do much of anything on there. My father is even
| worse. They didn't grow up with the technology like
| younger generations did and just don't get it.
| uoaei wrote:
| At the same time, there's plenty of people who didn't
| grow up with the technology and manage to navigate their
| devices fine. I had to teach an elder what the
| notifications bar was because their children never
| bothered to explain it. We should take some
| responsibility instead of being ageist by assuming old
| people are dumb.
| MeetingsBrowser wrote:
| > assuming old people are dumb
|
| Not just old people. Hackernews skews technical and seems
| to mostly interact with other technical people.
|
| There are people in their 30's, 40's and 50's who don't
| own a computer at all (other than a smartphone), don't
| interact with computers on a regular basis, and almost
| exclusively use the built-in talk/text/browser apps that
| come pre-installed.
|
| It may be a relatively small percentage of the adult
| population in the US, but it is still many millions of
| people.
| razingeden wrote:
| Apple is doing a marvelous job of destroying the whole "it
| just works" or "it's easy to figure out how to ____" thing
| they had going on. I would get over on an android 10-12
| years ago and get exasperated about even trying to send a
| text message on the damned thing. Which, unfortunately can
| also now be said about the Apple experience.
|
| Apple doesn't care what I think about their battery
| draining bloated garbage software anymore so I'm quietly
| quitting and don't care about them either.
|
| I just finally gave away my MacBook to someone who needed
| it more than I do .. I loathe Tahoe... as much as I do
| ios26... but haven't cut the cord with the iPhone YET.
|
| GrapheneOS seems to be the only contender that will get me
| to go along with that,(I'm running it on a pixel7 and
| warming up to it but still go back to iPhone to do some
| things I have no patience for figuring out on the pixel.)
|
| Motorola may seal the deal. If they offer a cool device. I
| had a Nexus 6 (I think) that Motorola made and it was cool,
| it was just already obsolete when I got my hands on it. I
| could root it and do whatever I wanted on it, and half the
| reason I got into iPhone was that I could readily jailbreak
| those once upon a time. And can't now.
|
| So I have this fisher price piece of shit Apple device I
| can't do anything fun on and the battery's dead after 2-3
| hours of use when ... I paid extra for so called "pro max"
| devices for the extra battery capacity alone... the whole
| reason I even went down that road was getting lost in New
| York City with a dead battery a few too many time, this
| thing used to go 12-15 hours under ios18...
|
| Motorola had made several of my favorite phones ever before
| an iPhone existed. We'll see. I don't think anyone even
| enjoys or wants an iPhone anymore. We are all just fucking
| , and getting fucked by, Apple until someone better comes
| along.
|
| What else disgusts me about Apple is all the subtle ways
| they want you even more addicted to or dependent on your
| device. iCloud bullshit. In device subscriptions. Oh use
| our password manager and have a unique fucking 30 char
| password for every single site . Would you like a
| proprietary "passkey" so you're forced to reach for your
| god damned iPhone another 15 times a day! 2fa? Authy won't
| run on gOS. Just all this endless shit I'm going to have to
| divorce and migrate off of as well to get rid of them. And
| i will because i _hate_ this company now. Please put them
| out of society's misery for us.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| The problem is as bad as Apple has become, it has a long
| way to fall before it reaches the depths of
| Google/Android. We could have six more iOS 26 style
| disaster releases and I suspect it would still be better
| than putting up with Android.
|
| I tried to switch to graphene for similar reasons to you.
| It just wasn't viable, as you're discovering.
|
| And if you want to even attempt to have a modern
| smartphone experience, you're logging into Google
| account, which is an "out of the frying pan, into the
| fire" move.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| That's where I'm at too.
|
| For now, Apple is still the best in a bad situation, and
| at least for now they aren't primarily an ad company.
|
| I am glad about the Graphene+Motorola partnership though,
| it always felt ironic to me to have to give Google money
| to completely escape Google.
| QuiEgo wrote:
| This reminds me of when people say "I can't believe
| developers use VS Code, real developers use vim/emacs"
|
| It's a tool, a means to an end. I just want my tool to be
| easy to use and work.
|
| Another analogy would be cars: do you tune and modify, or
| do you want a transportation appliance?
|
| There is no wrong answer. Maybe your hobby is tinkering
| with your tools. If that's you, more power to you.
|
| I want a phone, editor, and car that are easy to use and
| "just work."
| Zak wrote:
| That's gatekeeping/snobbery. VSCode won't tell you you're
| not allowed to install extensions that aren't blessed by
| Microsoft. If it started doing that, most people could
| trivially switch to Codium.
| eikenberry wrote:
| VSCodium does tell you your not allowed to install some
| extensions that are blessed by MS. (I.E. it's open core
| and switching might not be trivial if you rely on any of
| the proprietary extensions.)
| array_key_first wrote:
| There are actually wrong answers. We, intuitively, like
| to think in tradeoffs. No free lunch and all. So more
| open phones _must_ be harder to use, they must be X Y and
| Z. But theyre not necessarily.
| n8cpdx wrote:
| It's surprising to me that people who care enough about
| software to make a living writing it would tolerate the
| abominable state of software on Android.
|
| I tried switching but it is really hard when nearly every
| app is just horrible to use or missing basic features.
|
| Sure there are some limitations on what software is easy to
| install (as there are and will be soon on Android), but at
| least iOS has software worthy of being installed.
| jjice wrote:
| > 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.
|
| I ran Android since the beginning because I wanted to write
| my own software when I was in high school. I was on Android
| for something like 14 years. The other software I ran was
| never as good as my iOS compatriots. My software would
| crash, it looked worse, and it was generally lower quality.
|
| Of course, there were exceptions, but not enough.
|
| I switch to an iPhone a bit over a year ago and, while
| still having issues (especially recently), it's just such a
| better experience.
|
| My computer is where I do my fun software development. I
| just want my phone to work, which my Android phones
| weren't. Whether the hardware, the OS, or the applications
| were at fault doesn't matter to me, because I just wanted
| it to work.
| arealaccount wrote:
| I'm continued to be surprised that people carry around
| devices that are controlled by targeted advertising firms
| quantum_magpie wrote:
| Well, google doesn't sell pixels in eu that can use
| graphene, and samsung installed the israeli spyware on all
| their devices. So apple is kinda the best solution.
|
| Unless you count xiaomi and huawei as the proper android
| devices?
| nomel wrote:
| Before my iPhone I had Android with custom ROMs, tricked
| out UI, bunches of system automations, etc.
|
| Now I want to spend exactly 0 seconds a day on any of that,
| and would never buy something that caused me to exceed that
| 0 seconds. I want an _appliance_ in my pocket, when my car
| breaks down or I need to be in touch. I do my fun stuff
| elsewhere.
| cyberax wrote:
| It's weird to me that people keep saying that.
|
| How on Earth is iPhone more "appliancy" than regular
| Android? If anything, it's more annoying than Android
| with all the Apple inconsistencies. The settings UI, for
| example, is just plain broken. The gesture UI is finger-
| breakingly inconsistent, while Android has a simple
| reliable 3-button bottom bar.
| nomel wrote:
| The most appliance thing about it is continued updates
| for and switching to a new device.
|
| If you stick with Samsung, the issues I've had probably
| go away.
|
| > gesture UI is finger-breakingly inconsistent
|
| I'm not familiar with this, at all. The app switching is
| actually my favorite feature about iPhone. So easy to
| flip between two apps. I don't use a case, so maybe
| that's related.
| cyberax wrote:
| I've been using Pixel devices for a decade. I don't
| remember any issues with moving? I think the only
| bothersome thing was re-authentication in some apps after
| the move.
|
| It typically took me maybe an hour to move devices?
| Including moving to a non-Google phone once when I broke
| my phone during a foreign trip and had to get a temporary
| replacement.
|
| > I'm not familiar with this, at all. The app switching
| is actually my favorite feature about iPhone. So easy to
| flip between two apps. I don't use a case, so maybe
| that's related.
|
| I can't get it to switch consistently. On Android it's
| dead easy and reliable with a nav bar. On iPhone it's
| often not registering a gesture if I swipe too fast or
| don't start swiping from the very bottom.
| 99954bb63ccc wrote:
| It is funny how I do believe this is true, but also can't
| help but notice how much effort they spend defeating this
| exact user base. Reminds me of ad companies... I'm sure they
| also don't care about targeting some fraction of a percentage
| of their base, but look how much effort they spend defeating
| ad blockers lol.
| WebBurnout wrote:
| I know a fair number of non-technical folks that hate the
| idea of trusting Google or Apple with their data. It's part
| of a generalized backlash to big tech corps that will only
| increase as their size and power over our lives continues to
| grow unchecked. Godspeed GrapheneOS
| cogman10 wrote:
| The original Google Nexus program showed that there is a
| market for more open phones and platforms.
|
| I don't disagree with you that in order to sell, these
| devices need to be somewhat appealing to more than just devs.
| However, I will say that the dev market isn't as small as it
| once was. A decent phone with an open platform would be
| something a lot of devs would likely prioritize buying. It
| won't be the next Iphone, but it will be a pretty dedicated
| market segment.
|
| Framework is a good example of that. A laptop business that
| stays afloat mostly because there is a desire for repairable
| long lasting products, even if it's a bit niche.
|
| Given a lot of phone manufacturers are now trying bizarre
| edges to get ahead (like foldable... who wants that?) it
| seems like a good rarely taken route.
| neya wrote:
| Agree with you on the foldables. God, no one wants that.
| That's why they have to pitch it as some luxury product the
| masses can't afford. I hate those creases too. No one can
| convince me those things are durable...no matter how many
| marketing videos they make.
| bloomingeek wrote:
| Well...not to be disagreeable, I've had the Flip 4 and
| now, since it came out, a Flip 5. Both are excellent
| products. IF you keep a semi-fresh screen protector film
| on them, the screen will not break/crack in the flex/fold
| area. I didn't try them for luxury, I tried them because
| they fit comfortably in my pants pocket.
| cogman10 wrote:
| I guess I could see it. I'm guessing you tend to wear
| pants with shallow pockets correct? It is a problem my
| wife runs into that woman's pants have next to no
| pockets. She ends up needing to store her phone elsewhere
| as a result.
| unbalancedevh wrote:
| > Agree with you on the foldables. God, no one wants
| that.
|
| I think there are a lot of people who would love to have
| a smaller form-factor for when the phone is in their
| pocket, with a large screen for when it's being used. The
| current state-of-the-art might not be very good for
| foldable phones, but the demand is there, and that's what
| drives innovation.
| cyberax wrote:
| Does Apple use some kind of mind-control rays?!?
|
| Foldables are a growing market in Asia, where they are
| more widely available. They are quickly becoming a new
| status symbol, displacing Apple. Especially in China
| where the local phone manufacturers are now completely
| independent and free to experiment.
|
| Apple somehow completely missed the plot (yet again)
| despite being having the largest tablet marketshare.
| Google, to their credit, is now pushing developers
| towards supporting dynamic screen dimensions.
| neya wrote:
| I don't even use an Apple. I travel a lot within Asia,
| so, I'm aware of the foldables situation in Asia. But,
| again, only to prove my point - not everyone runs around
| with those. You usually see the wealthy and some rich
| kids carry them around.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I would love a Samsung Z fold 7 but they are far too
| expensive for me
| kelvinjps10 wrote:
| But this seems like it's mostly for corporations and
| businesses that they're doing this feature. It's the same as
| Lenovo Thinkpads which also have good Linux integration,and
| are catered to business. So if they're able to make business
| from this open products from corporations, and I as user
| benefit from a computer that allows to run open software.
| It's a win-win for everyone
| ohhnoodont wrote:
| The average consumer is also very happy to take
| recommendations from the tech-literate people in their life.
| I would love if there was a budget-friendly, privacy-
| preserving phone I could recommend to everyone.
| AndyMcConachie wrote:
| You have a point, but two counters to this:
|
| 1) You don't need to capture a large part of the market to
| make a profit. The market for smartphones is large enough
| that even capturing a small percentage of it can be
| profitable.
|
| 2) Privacy is increasingly becoming a differentiator and I
| predict privacy will be increasingly important as a
| differentiator. Just because no company has successfully
| managed to market privacy benefits doesn't mean there is no
| market for it. There's a lot of marketing potential in terms
| of privacy that companies like NordVPN, Incogni, and DeleteMe
| have figured out. People are clearly willing to pay for
| privacy.
| catapart wrote:
| It's developer fantasy because no one was putting any money
| into this kind of project. Presumably, because the data
| showed there wouldn't be enough return from it. Which then
| implies that the data has updated to show that there is at
| least enough for a company like Motorola to put at least this
| much money in to it.
|
| The whole point is that a company is going to try to market
| this developer fantasy to non-developers, assuming that what
| excites developers about it enough to discuss it will
| resonate with non-developers when they hear developers talk
| about their new phones.
|
| It's not a guarantee of success or anything, but a lot of
| stuff works like this. Mozilla didn't gain market dominance
| (for a hot second in the early 2000's) because they marketed
| to non-devs. They just provided a superior product in every
| way to everything else at the time, and devs couldn't ignore
| that, so non-devs always dealt with non-microsoft browsers
| whenever the devs came around. That kind of "grass is
| greener" non-marketing is a real winner when the product is
| solid.
|
| So here's hoping Motorola takes a great idea and builds a
| product so solid on it that people can't ignore it.
| Pxtl wrote:
| I actually think things have changed slightly. With the
| sudden shift to political extremism of the US government
| there's growing mistrust of US-owned software products... and
| anybody who thinks hard about that will have similar concerns
| about a Chinese company like Motorola/Lenovo.
|
| Now I don't know how _big_ the public market is. And you 'd
| have to do a lot of conspiracy-based marketing to pull it
| off, which is kind of gross.
|
| But commitment to auditable, hackable OSS would target a
| different market of people looking for devices -- think of
| the EU agencies trying to get off of MS products.
|
| "Hey, do you know if the NSA is spying on your devices? PLA
| intelligence? Would you like to be able to build all your
| phone's code from source to be sure?"
| XorNot wrote:
| Technically that marketing line would actually do really
| well to sell phones into those types of organizations and
| related ones too.
|
| A fully suitable off the shelf device would be a dream for
| most government IT.
| ajsnigrutin wrote:
| Developing countries also care about blocking ads, installing
| pirated games, and apps for pirated streaming of music and
| video.
|
| As someone born in a country that used to be "the leader" of
| the third world, computers here won over consoles only
| because we could pirate expensive games that we couldn't
| afford. Expensive cartridge vs two tape recorders and some
| fiddling with the tapes? The tapes win!
| informal007 wrote:
| The market is huge enough to including all kinds of consumers
| dj0k3r wrote:
| > countries around Asia and you'll be surprised how people
| prioritise features
|
| While this is true, I can also say that the other minority
| becomes large enough for any OEM to care. It might even drawf
| market size of other markets when only compares in numbers.
| shaky-carrousel wrote:
| The average consumer doesn't care about what you think. The
| average consumer is getting really tired of people speaking
| on their name. The average consumer would like to vote with
| their wallet, thank you very much.
| DyslexicAtheist wrote:
| you don't need to convince the average user, you just need to
| convince the tech-influencers.
| emporas wrote:
| > What developers want and what the average consumer
| wants/needs are two different things.
|
| This description of average consumer is so 2021. Nowadays the
| average consumer can vibe code stuff and share it with his
| friends. So he needs a package manager not only an app store.
|
| I personally don't hold vibe coding in any high regard, I
| hate not knowing and controlling what code is running on my
| computer/device, but I can see the value for amateurs in just
| playing around and occasionally destroying the OS, installing
| it again and so on.
| behnamoh wrote:
| > Nowadays the average consumer can vibe code stuff and
| share it with his friends. So he needs a package manager
| not only an app store.
|
| This is also developer fantasy for two reasons:
|
| (1) Most vibed apps suck in unpredictable ways.
|
| (2) Most avg consumers don't even know what Claude is, let
| alone Claude Code, let alone being good enough at vibing to
| produce anything of value.
| emporas wrote:
| >Most avg consumers don't even know what Claude is[..]
|
| Vibe coding is very early and pretty expensive, but
| computers and the internet are always in an exponential
| curve, a curve much steeper than the rest of the economy.
| Give it 3 years, and you will be amazed.
|
| Not everyone will be vibe coding. In every social circle
| of 10 people, 1 person will be good at that, and will
| develop programs for his/her friends.
|
| >Most vibed apps suck in unpredictable ways.
|
| Yes of course, it would be infinitely preferable for
| normal people to learn proper computer science,
| algorithms etc. We agree on that.
| the_real_cher wrote:
| The average consumer WILL like an OS that isnt overly
| cluttered and simpler and cleaner.
| slim wrote:
| The average consumer trusts our jugement. If we say motorola
| is the best phone, we will convert a significant chunk of
| consumers in as few as 5 years given the short life of the
| devices
| rewgs wrote:
| The article specifically talks about B2B and MDM-like
| features. The "average consumer" isn't the point here --
| rather, governments, defense, high-security corporations,
| etc.
| kube-system wrote:
| > 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?
|
| Even more than all of those, customers want Google Mobile
| Services apps, such as Google Play, Google Maps, YouTube.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Counter-point; we are in times of mass upheaval and protest.
| Purchasing a secure phone is desirable to almost anyone who
| is increasingly worried about state and corporate actors,
| especially those that would seek to surveil and coerce. I
| suspect some will buy these phones as a daily driver, some as
| a second phone.
|
| Institutional trust is at an all time low, this is a smart
| move selling into the growing demand for secure devices and
| it's in line with Lenovos recent big decision to sell Linux
| as the default on their new devices.
|
| Finally this seems to be a corporate play itself, most
| companies also don't want other companies surveilling their
| staff and extracting staff secrets. Hence the bringing of
| enterprise functionality to compliment the 'secure' work
| Graphene are already doing.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| > Lenovos recent big decision to sell Linux as the default
| on their new devices.
|
| Where did you see this? I want to believe it, but I can't
| find any press release about this (other than it already
| being available as an option at checkout, but it's not
| default) outside of weird domains full of AI articles.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Ok this has taken me down a rabbit hole. I swear I read
| this from a reputable source a week or so ago and my
| memory was that I went to post it here and there was
| already a HN post (but have been unable to find that nor
| the original article).
|
| Basic details from the article were that machines would
| come with Ubuntu for retail and fedora for business
| machines and that 60% of new machines were planned to be
| Linux; therefore ending Lenovos prioritising windows on
| the majority of its machines.
|
| But yeah can't find much record of it now.
|
| This site seems to have scraped the article I read as
| that copy all reads familiar but I def wasn't reading
| from an AI site with a YouTube thumbnail up top.
|
| https://galaxy.ai/youtube-summarizer/lenovos-historic-
| shift-...
|
| Earlier article that's not in question.
| https://itsfoss.com/news/lenovo-cuts-windows-tax/
| jama211 wrote:
| There's a huge amount of wishful thinking in this that
| people will care, and the Lenovo thing is just false.
| spaceribs wrote:
| People won't care until they do.
|
| After two years of talking up mastodon/pixelfed and most
| folks ignoring me, I've gotten 2 pings from family
| members about signing up and migrating off of
| twitter/instagram. It's only a matter of time and how
| quickly the rug gets pulled out from under folks I think.
| DANmode wrote:
| and network effects.
|
| Maybe their closer contacts disappeared...
| jama211 wrote:
| It'll get bigger for a bit for sure, but it'll never be
| mainstream until they change some fundamental things
| about how they operate.
| goku12 wrote:
| I'm going to say this again. You aren't giving people
| credit where it's due. Those who live in democracies
| don't hold that privilege by not caring about anything.
| It's something that they constantly fight for.
|
| The only specialty that we possess over others is a
| deeper knowledge about technology and the politics behind
| it. But it DOESN'T have to be exclusive to us. We're not
| the only ones fed up with this amount of BS from the
| gilded class. People do listen and act if we're willing
| to inform them. Even if everyone doesn't respond, there
| will still be enough to make a difference. Just
| dismissing their will like this is uncharitable at best.
| jama211 wrote:
| Preaching to the choir mate. I'm just being realistic.
| Arainach wrote:
| Consumers, when faced with a $100 Microwave that will last
| 2 years and a $130 microwave that will last ten, will buy
| the cheaper one nearly always. They don't care.
|
| Consumers, when faced with a phone that offers "privacy"
| but that doesn't work with their banking app or their
| favorite game, will return it and get the non-privacy phone
| essentially every time.
| summm wrote:
| Microwaves are a bad example. The cheaper ones are white
| labels basically all made in the same factory in China.
| The customer has no way to know if the slightly more
| expensive one is actually more durable or, much more
| likely, just the same, but generates more profit for the
| intermediaries. In this situation it is wiser to get the
| cheaper one.
| Arainach wrote:
| Consumers have no way to tell that a phone gives
| "privacy" or even to understand the implications of that
| to their life. They have a significantly easier time
| understanding an error message that says "because your
| device has an unlocked bootloader, you can't use the
| <name of bank> app"
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > Consumers have no way to tell that a phone gives
| "privacy" or even to understand the implications of that
| to their life.
|
| This is the sort of thing anyone can look up on the
| internet before buying one.
|
| The reason that doesn't work for white label microwaves
| is that the manufacturers don't want it to. The off
| brands exist so they can make sales to people who
| prioritize price, and they purposely change the company
| name every month so no one can find a review of the off
| brand and the same company can sell the same microwave
| with a higher margin to other people who will pay more
| for the name brand.
|
| Whereas when your company makes a phone with better
| privacy etc., you _want_ everybody to know that so they
| buy your phone instead of a competitor 's.
|
| > They have a significantly easier time understanding an
| error message that says "because your device has an
| unlocked bootloader, you can't use the <name of bank>
| app"
|
| Indeed, it immediately lets them know that their bank
| sucks and they need a better one. (It's actually a pretty
| decent red flag that your bank has a cargo cult security
| team.)
| Arainach wrote:
| > This is obviously false. It's the sort of thing anyone
| can look up on the internet before buying one.
|
| It's not something that's quantifiable, and it's easily
| manipulable. The iPhone(tm) has a twelth-generation
| quantum superconducting wonderflonium chip that enables
| (pile of technobabble garbage) and "privacy".
|
| This Motorola thing has (pile of technobabble garbage)
| and "privacy".
|
| Consumers don't understand and they don't care. Even the
| ones with technologically savvy friends don't want the
| hassle, they want something that works.
|
| How has 30 years of "Microsoft is anti-consumer and <pile
| of complaints>, you should use Linux" worked out for
| consumer market share?
|
| > Indeed, it immediately lets them know that their bank
| sucks and they need a better one.
|
| If you think even 0.1% of consumers would switch banks to
| buy some new phone, this conversation is not worth
| continuing as you and I don't live in the same reality.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > It's not something that's quantifiable, and it's easily
| manipulable. The iPhone(tm) has a twelth-generation
| quantum superconducting wonderflonium chip that enables
| (pile of technobabble garbage) and "privacy".
|
| That's the marketing noise from the company itself. Then
| you go to Reddit or similar and ask technically competent
| people what they recommend.
|
| > Even the ones with technologically savvy friends don't
| want the hassle, they want something that works.
|
| The phone that supports open operating systems _is_ the
| one that 's less of a hassle. It doesn't go out of
| support even though there's nothing wrong with it, it
| isn't full of spyware and weird bugs because people can
| actually fix them when the OEM doesn't, it has a working
| ad blocker etc.
|
| > How has 30 years of "Microsoft is anti-consumer and
| <pile of complaints>, you should use Linux" worked out
| for consumer market share?
|
| Windows market share was >90%, now it's 67% and still
| falling. And that's just desktops; Microsoft was
| completely abandoned in the mobile market because they
| were so widely hated. By most accounts Windows Phone was
| actually decent but being from the notorious company
| whose OS nobody uses unless they're locked in was a death
| sentence.
|
| > If you think even 0.1% of consumers would switch banks
| to buy some new phone, this conversation is not worth
| continuing as you and I don't live in the same reality.
|
| You're not switching banks to buy a new phone, you're
| switching banks because when you bought a new phone it
| made you realize that your bank sucks. Which annoyed you
| enough to spend five minutes checking out other banks, at
| which point you realized there are credit unions that not
| only support your new phone but pay better interest rates
| and charge lower fees.
|
| Then you remember that time when they charged you that
| fee for some BS reason last year and you swore you were
| going to get a new bank but never got around to it, and
| decide that you'd rather get on with what you always
| intended to do sooner rather than later instead of
| replacing your new phone that you otherwise like.
| Arainach wrote:
| >Microsoft was completely abandoned in the mobile market
| because they were so widely hated.
|
| This was not a factor. Windows phone lost because they
| didn't have apps. They didn't have apps because they
| rewrote between Windows Mobile 6 and WP7, and rewrote
| between WP7 and WP8, and rewrote between between WP8.1
| and WP10. That's a lot of work for developers and they
| didn't have enough users to justify developers rewriting
| their apps that many times. Combine that with some
| companies refusing to build apps at all (YouTube refused
| to write an app and sued to block Microsoft from writing
| their own YouTube client) and users didn't want to put up
| with the lack of apps either.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| > This was not a factor. Windows phone lost because they
| didn't have apps.
|
| They didn't have apps because nobody likes them. If
| you're a user and you expect them to be well-liked then
| you buy the phone expecting others to buy the phone and
| developers to target it. If you're a developer then you
| make apps expecting enough users to buy the phone.
|
| But if you don't like them and you're not sure anybody
| else is going to like them then you play wait and see
| instead, and so does everybody else, and so they have no
| apps and no users and people start to see that they have
| no apps and no users.
|
| Which is why they kept changing things trying to force
| people to do it, giving Windows 8 that widely-disliked
| tablet interface on desktops etc.
|
| > YouTube refused to write an app and sued to block
| Microsoft from writing their own YouTube client
|
| Oh no, did someone with a dominant OS market share do an
| anti-competitive thing _to_ Microsoft?
|
| You're asking why people don't pick up Linux faster but
| you can see the symmetry when it's going the other way.
| It's not that they don't _want to_ , it's that 80% of
| enshitification is lock-in.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Many consumers, is not all consumers. This play doesn't
| need to swing everyone it just needs to be the preferred
| option for a commercially sized niche. People who care
| about security, in these times, is surely a growing
| demographic and fairly stable once folks value this
| first. Its sticky clients who won't easily leave if this
| stays best in class as "most secure".
|
| Roughly 10% of buyers across most products and services
| will seek to buy "the best". For those where the best is
| defined as "the best security", Motorola (running
| GrapheneOS) has the opportunity to take these customers
| off of Apple. Not to say everyone is looking for a "more
| secure phone" but positioning that can seek to gain 5-10%
| of the mobile phone market, for a player who hasn't had
| significant market share since the pre-iPhone 1990's,
| looks like a no brainer, from Motorola's perspective.
| dismalaf wrote:
| To add to this, midrange phones and laptops are now more than
| "good enough". You can get a phone for a couple hundred
| dollars that plays just about any game, runs any software,
| takes good enough pictures.
|
| Laptops too. Look at the Steam Deck or Switch 2, both years
| old hardware, both very relevant. Laptops with equivalent
| specs are more than fine for most people.
| 0xdeadbeefbabe wrote:
| > user control and freedom
|
| Yeah, most people don't want that. Wasn't that apple add with
| the hammer all about freedom?
| whatshisface wrote:
| Developer fantasy? Here's the consumer fact: people do not
| like the race-to-the-bottom extractive practices installed on
| their computers non-consentually. People do not like the
| union-style collective barganining of duopolies following
| each other's anticonsumer practices after the bolder one
| tests it. Everybody complains about this stuff nonstop, and
| adapts by reducing their attention span on a fundamental
| level. The demand for a respectful computing environment is
| enormous.
| godelski wrote:
| This is just a pessimist's 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 many people are sideloading apps, which is part
| of the reason Google tried their bullshit with developing
| countries first.
|
| You're right that people mostly care about if it works, but
| when they have more choices they care about more things _IF_
| all else is equal. The "2 years" thing is definitely not
| correct either, especially as budgets are getting tighter.
|
| The time is right for this change, as the reality is that the
| market has stagnated. Even cheap phones have good cameras,
| good batteries, and run smooth now. There's been very little
| innovation in phones over the last 5 years that the average
| person actually cares about. But the average person is
| frustrated with surveillance capitalism, but feels like
| there's nothing they can do about it. Don't confuse
| exhaustion with apathy. They look similar, but are very
| different.
| burningChrome wrote:
| >> This is just a pessimist's 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?
|
| The Windows phone did all three way better than Android and
| was still a massive failure in the US and abroad.
| godelski wrote:
| I was never able to daily drive it but the people I knew
| that did would have disagreed. Regardless of reality
| perception also matters, unfortunately.
| exabrial wrote:
| The laptop segment is a poor example. Apple is the only
| company mass producing high performance arm laptops with a
| completely custom os that integrates to the hardware. You
| take what you can get. Your choices are: run windows (lol),
| or linux(whats linux?) system76 is the only company even
| coming close, but their performance is way behind mainstream
| unfortunately because they don't have the custom silicon
| capability that Apple does.
| OneDeuxTriSeiGo wrote:
| The average consumer may not care but there's multiple
| overlapping segments that Motorola can capitalise on here:
|
| - tech consumers (i.e. the current GOS pixel market)
|
| - family members of tech consumers. i.e. tech consumers can
| hopefully now recommend stock grapheneOS on motorola to
| family members since it's not a custom ROM but just a stock
| device with official manufacturer support.
|
| - privacy/security conscious non-techy types.
|
| - non-techy users who want a device without AI or a bunch of
| unnecessary addon apps like google or samsung tend to preload
| on devices.
|
| - business IT optimising for security and minimal attack
| surface while sticking to COTS B2B and B2C options for
| corporate handhelds.
|
| Like this isn't the largest market ever but it's a sizeable
| and fairly loyal market because each one of these groups is
| fairly opposed to unnecessary change. It's safe, reliable,
| and sustainable growth in a broader market that is extremely
| hostile.
|
| And they are in particular targeting the business IT market
| since this announcement was made as part of their showcase on
| their new B2B cellular options.
| RGamma wrote:
| Don't underestimate tech-savy users' influence either. I
| could easily add 7+ people to the user base next
| replacement cycle.
| diacritical wrote:
| I could add 3 off the top of my head. Probably a couple
| more. Privacy conscious people who aren't techies. Some
| have tried Linux, some don't know what a "browser" or "SD
| card" is.
|
| If features like phone calls, SMS, the camera and most
| regular apps work (especially banking apps, sadly),
| they'll be happy and receive free indefinite support from
| me.
|
| I wouldn't use banking apps myself unless they open
| source them, but I'm willing to make a concession and
| support my friends' issues with such apps.
| mulmen wrote:
| Bank tech sucks. I'm really surprised nobody has made a
| good online bank experience with no-nonsense APIs. This
| is a great opportunity for Motorola to partner with banks
| that commit to supporting their platform. The right
| online bank could be an ideal launch partner.
| GorbachevyChase wrote:
| Would it be better for privacy? I just can't imagine a
| world where our "intelligence" blows up elementary
| schools and runs child rape rings and somehow telecom
| companies are allowed to make a product that doesn't have
| access for "white" hats.
| saidinesh5 wrote:
| It might be developer fantasy but half of the giants in the
| mobile market really did take off this way:
|
| * xiaomi with their miui skin/custom ROM - "bringing iOS like
| polish to Android" back then
|
| * oneplus with their initial devices with cyanogenmod - clean
| aosp interface without any bloat and lots of features.
|
| In fact, when my brother was buying phones for my mom
| (neither of them were really that technically inclined), he
| bought a Motorola mostly because "it doesn't have all those
| ads like redmi at the same price"
| pants2 wrote:
| Indeed - I remember MKBHD praising the initial OnePlus
| thanks to that approach. Today he's got 20M subscribers. If
| Motorola gets big tech reviewers on their side it's a big
| market.
|
| Not to mention the more techy people in a family unit often
| make recommendations. I told my dad to buy a Nexus phone
| for that same reason which he still has, of course it's 10y
| old now so I'll probably have him upgrade to a Motorola.
| reddalo wrote:
| I've been buying Google Pixel for almost 10 years now, and
| Nexus phones before that, and my current Pixel is the last
| Google phone I'll buy.
|
| The ecosystem is closed, Google is speed-running to 100%
| evil, they're locking down APK installations, etc.
|
| I need to find a replacement, and with me a lot of tech
| friends and non-techies that just ask me for advice.
|
| The market is waiting for someone to step in; this is a
| golden chance for Motorola.
| wpwpwpw wrote:
| You can install GrapheneOS today on your Pixel.
| varenc wrote:
| I generally agree with the sentiment about the average
| consumer, but the commenter above called out MDM
| specifically, as in, corporate Mobile Device Management
| (MDM).
|
| I definitely see how large security conscious companies could
| be quite interested in a good GrapheneOS phone since it would
| alleviate fears about their corporate data getting leaked to
| Google, and really allow them to secure the phone in all the
| ways they want. So the market wouldn't just be niche privacy
| conscious consumer, but companies buying these phones for
| employees.
| dleslie wrote:
| When side-loading and adblock stops being available then the
| average consumer will flip a table. Most folks I know with
| Android devices have them running with adblockers and such;
| and their Android TV devices are _loaded_ with pirate
| streaming software.
|
| Because here in Canada you can buy devices preloaded with
| such things for a pittance over MSRP.
| boplicity wrote:
| I wonder if there is an enterprise market for a fully
| audited, fully customizable phone that can be deployed across
| an entire organization, giving the institution full control
| of the software, apps, security, usage, etc.
| DANmode wrote:
| > Is the phone smooth? Does it have a good camera? Does it
| have a good battery? Does it last more than 2 years?
|
| Currently, yes. These are easily achieved bars for a Graphene
| piece.
| rprend wrote:
| There is a hobbyist market for a tinker-phone; it's just
| tiny. Like Raspberry Pi or Framework market cap vs Macbook
| market cap.
| raincole wrote:
| > a good chunk of market share
|
| Seriously how? Unless you mean "a good chunk of market share
| for a niche OS"?
| rapsey wrote:
| > 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.
| rprend wrote:
| Yep. Enthusiasts are cheap, picky, and have no loyalty.
| They're extremely political and are the only type of customer
| who will actually switch. Plus it's a tiny market. You might
| eek out $50mil revenue after a decade, if you're lucky.
| JohnLocke4 wrote:
| 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
| anonym29 wrote:
| "If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said
| faster horses."
|
| - Commonly misattributed to Henry Ford
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Yeah I don't think the common consumer thinks that the leap
| from a regular Android or Apple smartphone to something
| 'more open' is the leap from a horse-drawn carriage to an
| automobile. That's fantasy thinking.
| anonym29 wrote:
| You seem to be misinterpreting the implication. The
| implication is that the consumer would never ask for what
| they actually want, because the consumer can't even
| conceive the possibility of what they really want being
| available.
|
| Ask an exercise, ask yourself this: if you could offer
| every iPhone or Android shopper the choice between their
| current OS, and an otherwise exactly identical one that
| just wasn't listening to them, spying on them, tracking
| them, selling their every thought to advertisers, and
| shoving irrelevant ads into their face all day long, how
| many do you think would honestly prefer the one with all
| the spyware and ads?
|
| Ordinary people do _want_ privacy of their data, autonomy
| over their device. They just feel so hopelessly powerless
| in the fight that they don 't believe it's even possible
| to achieve any meaningful degree of privacy or control
| these days, and those values are less important to them
| than the value of having a smartphone itself, so they
| sacrifice those values to have a smartphone.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| It's not just that. How many bugs or ridiculous
| misfeatures do existing phones have because the OEMs are
| teaching to the test for benchmarks or just don't care to
| fix them?
|
| You were reading something on your phone, switched to a
| different app for 3 seconds and then back, and now it's
| an error page because you're in a poor cell coverage area
| but the device is nefariously aggressive at unloading
| apps to try to eek out a marginal advantage on battery
| life reviews. Worse, for well-behaved apps that actually
| _degrades_ battery life because having to reload the app
| requires the device to do more work than letting it stay
| idle in the background.
|
| Separate the software from the hardware and you don't
| have to worry about that, because they can mess up the
| stock image however they want for the reviews and you
| just have someone replace it with a version with those
| bugs removed.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| The average consumer wants a phone with their personal
| balance of:
|
| * Feature
|
| * Price
|
| * Looks/status
|
| Everything else is completely irrelevant. Now, _what_
| features and _what_ looks varies over time. But something
| as intangible as being 'more open' or 'more private'
| just isn't significant for most people. People on HN
| care. Average consumers do not. It's too ethereal and
| meaningless.
|
| If a new phone or service had a specific certification,
| like how IP certifications work for waterproofing, _then_
| that might change. If it was certified by a third party
| that X phone with Y service would never sell your data in
| Z ways.
|
| But without something concrete, it's irrelevant.
| wildredkraut wrote:
| And a good selfie cam for their duck faces.
| jraph wrote:
| That's not what I observe. Many non technical people have
| ethical concerns.
|
| This fantasy among the technical crowd here that the general
| public only cares about cheap and convenient, which is at
| best condescending, needs to die. Convincing oneself of this
| only takes meeting non technical people.
| rprend wrote:
| It is not a fantasy it is fact based on watching people buy
| phones.
| al_borland wrote:
| Every non-technical person I've talked to doesn't seem to
| care. In many cases I think it's because they don't really
| understand or the threat is too abstract. For example,
| collecting information to display ads and manipulate an
| algorithm to influence how a person thinks, feels, and
| consumes, for fun and profit.
|
| Since they can't see it, think they're above it, and see
| stuff that makes them laugh, they just keep going. Never
| mind all the misinformation these same people send me or
| how worked up they get about various political issues they
| never seemed to care about before.
|
| This is the boat a lot of people I know fall into. They
| will get upset about a lot of stuff, but have a massive
| blind spot when it comes to online and device privacy, even
| if I try to point it out. I'm usually trying to point it
| out as they are trying to convince me to join Facebook and
| Instagram. If I get worked up over some privacy overreach
| in something I'm trying to use, they just kind of shrug. A
| fiend of mine spent all morning ranting to me about
| streaming services, but isn't cancelling any of them.
| jraph wrote:
| I suppose it depends on the area then. Or maybe I'm in my
| own bubble.
|
| Most people I know aren't particularly technical, and
| many of them are at least concerned or aware of these
| topics, even if they haven't taken any concrete actions
| (yet).
|
| Keep trying to gently spread the word then, that's a good
| thing to do (without being annoying!). It takes time, but
| it eventually pays.
| lossyalgo wrote:
| I also have a lot of friends who deleted WhatsApp,
| Facebook, etc. over the years due to privacy concerns. I
| also know a few people who have dumb phones for the same
| reason. I have gotten a couple friends to install
| NetGuard firewall on their Android phones and gave them a
| quick tutorial how to whitelist new apps and they are
| very happy that they have some sort of control about what
| comes in/goes out of their phones. All of the above
| groups are very non-technical. And on the other end, 50%
| of my technical friends don't seem to give a shit anymore
| - maybe they realize it's futile to even try, since the
| panopticon is multi-faceted and drains a lot of energy
| trying to keep prying eyes away. Ignorance can be bliss?
| duskdozer wrote:
| I think that group of people is divided between those who
| think they're above it and don't care at all and those
| who do care but feel powerless to stop it and try not to
| think about it. Both end up looking the same on the
| surface
| al_borland wrote:
| I move them from the, "doesn't think about it" to "thinks
| they're above it", when they make claims that their
| algorithm isn't like that, they can see the manipulation
| tactics, etc... while at the same time being fired up
| over some nonsense they saw in their feed or thinking AI
| stuff is real. It's clearly impacting them, but their
| hubris prevents them from seeing or admitting it.
| lenkite wrote:
| Most of the non-technical but politically-attuned people
| I know are the ones who are actually concerned about the
| Apple+Google monopoly. The technical people are the ones
| who don't care.
| Aerbil313 wrote:
| My experience is that you can't "convince" people out of
| Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok, because the platforms
| themselves convince people to use them. They always emit
| that background radiation of "You're missing out on VERY
| important stuff".
|
| It's literally brainwashing by design. My dad is
| convinced everybody should use Facebook to be informed or
| they'll be "left behind". My peers are convinced you're
| socially a loser if you don't have Instagram. Privacy
| concerns are not even an afterthought.
|
| And this brainwashing sits on top of the dopamine/reward
| center related neurochemical effects of these apps, which
| are very mild, much milder than any typical substance
| addictions for most people.
|
| It took me aboout 3 months of abstinence of Reddit and HN
| for it to finally click that I didn't actually need them
| at any capacity in my life.
|
| The blind spot is all too obvious for those with eyes to
| see. I can tell which app is a person's drug of choice
| within ~5 minutes of meeting them. Over time, these
| algorithm-driven apps even (subtly) change a person's
| personality.
| cdf wrote:
| You hit the nail on the head. The rest of the world yearns
| for a phone that is cheap, has many years of updates, and not
| directly subject to US government control.
|
| Motorola on GrapheneOS can run away with this and create a
| Global South phone ecosystem that can rival that of Apple and
| Google. The fact they are Chinese owned is a feature.
| incompatible wrote:
| I think so. I'm more comfortable with China having access
| to my data than the US, at this point.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| I agree as someone who supports devices for enterprise - if the
| MDM works, I'd push for these. So far we only really support
| Apple and Samsung (Knox) because It Just Works (TM) with Intune
| and other MDM tools. We looked at the Lenovo phone, and I
| seriously considered it for personal use, but we had already
| left the android market for corporate owned devices by the time
| this hit so I cant speak to how well it does or doesn't work on
| MDM. Shame you couldn't buy that as a consumer.
| hypercube33 wrote:
| ThinkPhone*
| JadedBlueEyes wrote:
| I got the ThinkPhone as a consumer (via lenovo.com) and am
| quite happy with it.
| broadsidepicnic wrote:
| There's some road ahead here.
|
| I enrolled my graphene into my company's intune, and I had to
| inject the play services via adb during the enrollment, as of
| course the graphene doesnt have play services available in
| the work profile -> unable to enroll it completely without
| injecting some apk's there
| maxloh wrote:
| I don't think so. Motorola Mobility is owned by the Chinese
| Lenovo, making it an adversary-owned entity in the eyes of most
| Western governments.
|
| Even with a fully open-source OS and first-class MDM, the
| company would struggle to gain significant market share. The
| Hardware Root of Trust and the binary blobs would still be
| compiled by a firm that Western governments view as a
| fundamental supply-chain risk.
| alpineman wrote:
| I never worked in a corporate that didn't use Lenovo
| carlmr wrote:
| There are MacBook companies, but Lenovo is basically the
| only other alternative.
|
| I've had Dell in the past, but haven't seen one in years.
| bigfatkitten wrote:
| You won't see any Lenovo in the defense industry.
| joe_mamba wrote:
| Defense industry is a small fraction of the notebook
| market, meaning Lenovo is still no. 1 globally even when
| missing the global defense market
| lava_pidgeon wrote:
| You are aware of the existence of the Chinese defence
| industry?
| moffkalast wrote:
| > Lenovo (/l@'noUvoU/ l@-NOH-voh, Chinese: Lian Xiang ;
| pinyin: Lianxiang), is a Hong Kong-based Chinese-American[11]
| multinational corporation
|
| > Lenovo originated as an offshoot of a state-owned research
| institute.[14] Then known as Legend and distributing foreign
| IT products, co-founder Liu Chuanzhi incorporated[2] Legend
| in Hong Kong in an attempt to raise capital and was
| successfully permitted to build computers in China
|
| Ok holy fuck, how did they stop that from being common
| knowledge? Nobody I know would ever think of Lenovo as
| nothing but another US company.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| It was common knowledge in my circles back at the time of
| the acquisition, but that's been 20+ years ago now. I try
| to bring attention to it whenever I'm asked about using
| Lenovo gear.
| throw5t43e2 wrote:
| I'm pretty sure OP is being sarcastic.
|
| The companies I have worked for in the past have always
| sworn by Thinkpads.
|
| I don't care who owns them Thinkpads are amazing.
| maxloh wrote:
| I can only supply you with facts. Trust could be an
| emotional word after all.
|
| Using a device manufactured by an adversary-owned entity
| defeats the sole purpose of MDM. Your data isn't safe
| within an OS compiled by a Chinese company that
| "originated as an offshoot of a state-owned research
| institute." [1] There are so many layers where a backdoor
| could be hidden within the stack.
|
| I don't think Big Techs or any companies that take data
| security seriously would accept such a device.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo
| tazjin wrote:
| Okay, so which hardware are you buying that _isn 't_
| using any Chinese components?) I don't think the empire
| can make this kind of hardware from scratch without China
| at the moment.
| moffkalast wrote:
| China makes excellent hardware, that's not really the
| core issue with this.
| thewebguyd wrote:
| I remember it being a pretty big deal when IBM spun off
| thinkpads to Lenovo, and then again when they were caught
| installing malware in the EFI on some of the entry level
| models.
|
| I've avoided them since despite them being the favored
| laptop of most corporate and Linux users.
| rngfnby wrote:
| I guess you're too young to remember Lenovo buying IBM's PC
| business and folks complaining about security since they
| were Chinese?
| BatteryMountain wrote:
| Even then, it can be solved by having open-source firmware,
| kernels, drivers and userspace. If they make that the core
| value proposition, they will win.If they can guarantee the
| entire execution chain is open & clean, or even just
| flashable with custom firmwares/kernels, that would be
| amazing.
| josephcsible wrote:
| That doesn't solve it. If the hardware itself is
| backdoored, none of those other things being open source
| will save you.
| conz wrote:
| Re: "The Hardware Root of Trust and the binary blobs would
| still be compiled by a firm that Western governments view as
| a fundamental supply-chain risk."
|
| Sorry to break it to you, but all of the US hardware firms
| have now fallen into this same trust-abyss. Trump's USA is
| now seen in many parts as as big, if not a bigger, digital
| sovereignty threat as China's communist party is.
| smm11 wrote:
| People threatened nope-ing themselves if TikTok was removed.
| The percent of people who care about this sort of stuff is
| beyond miniscule.
| small_model wrote:
| I don't think so, phones are consumer devices as are laptops
| and tablets these days. How many people would buy a dishwasher
| that is hackable or uses 'open source' software vs a standard
| one. If you want to see how this might go look at the market
| share of Framework laptop vs Apple/Chrome books. You are
| talking 0.05% if you are lucky.
| input_sh wrote:
| > You are talking 0.05% if you are lucky.
|
| That's... completely fine? One of my biggest pet peeves on
| this forum is someone like you mentioning half a million
| devices sold annually and somehow simultaneously calling that
| a failure.
|
| You don't have to take over the whole market to be a
| successful company, many companies would be perfectly happy
| with selling half a million devices every year (AKA 0,05% of
| over a billion smartphones).
| small_model wrote:
| Yes of course its great, but I was replying to OP who said
| 'the market is beyond ripe for a good shake up'
| KurSix wrote:
| The real question is whether Motorola is willing to accept
| lower short-term margins (and possible carrier friction) in
| exchange for long-term brand differentiation
| j-krieger wrote:
| No one cares about these things outside the tech bubble.
| 7bit wrote:
| Nobody cares bro. The people who care for that are 1 out of
| 1000.
| system2 wrote:
| Ah, an opensource phone so people can screw up their own
| security with Ai code.
| chpatrick wrote:
| None of that sells phones.
| cromka wrote:
| Eh, wildcard statements like this. Checked your history and
| you sure like one-liner hit-and-runs like this one. No
| substance, just vague opinions.
|
| But to actually answer you properly: Heard of OnePlus? They
| were niche manufacturers curating to geeks like ourselves at
| the very beginning and THEY USED CyanogenMod ROM! When it was
| way, WAY more amateurish than GrapheneOS!
|
| When a market is super saturated, the only way to stand out
| is to experiment and see if something sticks.
|
| This is going to be a very good experiment and can absolutely
| sell like hot cakes, especially in Europe if they market it
| well. We absolutely need an - even semi - independent Android
| hardware here.
|
| Not that I am expecting any meaningful response from you.
| bored13 wrote:
| Isn't OnePlus rumored to be on their way out?
|
| At minimum, sales haven't been great, & their upmarket push
| into becoming a mainstream premium brand hasn't perfectly
| worked out for them
| cromka wrote:
| That brand is 12 y/o and has between 3 and 5% market
| share, roughly the same as Motorola. Whether or not they
| make it doesn't matter, what matters is how they started
| as total amateurs with no brand and a beloved aftermarket
| ROM and where this got them.
| jinzo wrote:
| They started (and still are?) as an Oppo spinoff. Very
| (very) far from 'total amateurs'.
|
| I would very much like something other than a Pixel for
| GrapheneOS. But let's not get wild expectations based on
| false pretenses.
| cromka wrote:
| Oppo itself released their first smartphone in 2011. So
| not total amateurs, you're right on that, but it was no
| Apple or Samsung or HTC. They managed to appeal to geeks
| and started a niche brand that went mainstream.
| turf_penguin wrote:
| Market share declining albeit slowly, customer opinions
| of each device release declining over time as well & they
| are generally on the more expensive end of the phone
| market.
|
| Most of the tech enthusiasts who helped them kick off by
| buying for modding like cyanogen don't go near them now.
|
| They used to be my recommendation to non technical
| friends and I doubt that I am the only one who long ago
| changed to other recommendations.
|
| The company needs to revisit their roots in my opinion.
| chpatrick wrote:
| Nice ad hominems, good job.
|
| It's the same deal with small phones. Everyone thinks
| they're a great idea, then when they actually release them
| no one buys them. You can't plan your products based on
| what a small group of users want.
|
| I use Graphene myself and I think it's great but this idea
| that it's something the average user is clamoring for is
| just fiction.
| MarsIronPI wrote:
| It does to a certain audience: the people who care about
| privacy, security and freedom.
|
| I suspect that as time goes on our numbers will only
| increase.
| liuliu wrote:
| As much as I wish, it is going the other way. Caring about
| the 3 requires literacy, which in the world of LLM, is one
| thing that going to be reduced as a whole for human-kind.
| MerrimanInd wrote:
| My non-technical mother recently texted the family group
| chat to try to get us to use Signal. The winds are shifting
| towards privacy in a broader sense than ever before. This
| type of counter argument ("that doesn't sell [product") is
| usually a bad argument when the market doesn't offer
| anything that actually sells on privacy. It becomes a self-
| fulfilling prophecy.
| simmerup wrote:
| Hopefully there's only so many times Meta can suggest
| some creepy connection you didn't want made before people
| start valuing privacy
| turf_penguin wrote:
| Agreed graphene is the only reason I picked up a Pixel.
| Google phone would have been a no thanks from me otherwise.
| Grimblewald wrote:
| It does and increasingly will. I've got my non techiterate
| friends and famkly getting quite concerned about privacy and
| de-googling. This is something that would on some level be
| appealing to all. Even if they cannot appreciarw the full
| depth. Hell, android enjoyed much love because of open it
| was. Now that google has decided to put an end to that, so
| too does end android love.
| theLiminator wrote:
| I doubt that more than 5% of the population knows what open
| source means.
| jcgl wrote:
| Well 5% of a massive addressable market it itself quite a
| lot.
| jraph wrote:
| Try "aware, even vaguely, of the privacy issues standard
| smartphones pose".
|
| (I would bet more than 5% have at least a vague notion of
| open source though, and a positive a priori - also
| possibly mixing it with source-available, which would be
| on par with some people we can read on HN)
| tinco wrote:
| Less than 5% of the population knew what it meant to
| install an app when the iPhone launched. I believe Steve
| Ballmer ridiculed the idea when asked about it.
|
| A great many amount of people use Android to this day
| because of its more open nature, and that's despite
| Google's involvement. If Motorola could go back to its
| native roots, shake the idea of Chinese influence, and do
| open source proper, I bet there's a lot more than 5% of
| the market ready for it.
| turf_penguin wrote:
| It doesn't matter how many know what open source means -
| they all use it in some manner after all.
|
| Take away open source and there would barely be a large
| tech company left standing.
| theLiminator wrote:
| I'm not arguing against that, I'm just saying that open
| source labelling isn't a feature to users.
|
| The downstream effects of something being open source
| might acquire users, but being open source in of itself
| doesn't do anything except for a very tiny slice of the
| population. I'd say (in the US) more than half of the
| software developers I know use an Apple phone despite
| Android being much more open.
|
| Whenever I'm on HN I feel like most of the posters here
| live in a bubble where they think most people are
| anywhere near as tech literate as they are. (You can
| really feel how this forum is SF-coded).
| fsflover wrote:
| > open source labelling isn't a feature to users
|
| > The downstream effects of something being open source
| might acquire users
|
| So labeling means nothing, but open-source _is_ important
| to users. See also: enshittification.
| Sarkie wrote:
| It'll be my next if it works
| dt3ft wrote:
| Same here.
| turf_penguin wrote:
| I am worried the partnership with a large corporate will
| influence security negatively.
|
| Perhaps over time not immediate but execs and data harvesting,
| backdoors... I feel like it always goes one way and it's not
| the way a security conscious person would go.
| al_borland wrote:
| Only if they can make it easy to use without compromising on
| what makes GrapheneOS what it is.
|
| I'm in the Apple ecosystem, but was curious about it after
| hearing so many people talk about it. Linus Tech Tips made a
| video on it a while back and for those who don't want to
| tinker, it sounded like it could be a bit of a nightmare. At my
| age, I'm not looking for my phone to become a hobby.
|
| This generally means sensible defaults for the 80%, settings
| for the 95%, and then more settings just behind the curtain for
| the 5% who really want to tinker or to cover the one-gaps from
| choices made for the 95%.
| h4kunamata wrote:
| >At my age, I'm not looking for my phone to become a hobby.
|
| Yout first mistake was to consume Linus content. Its reviews
| are biased and compromised.
|
| And no, GOS is not a hobby. I have been using it for 3-4y on
| a brand new (back then) Google Pixel 7 PRO.
|
| You install it following the instructions on the browser, it
| is next-next-finish process. Once done, you use it like a
| normal phone but without Google Apps installed all over the
| place.
|
| You have the freedom to install the apps you please, when you
| please, while GOS itself makes sure that if you ever install
| Google Apps, it never has access to your data, it runs
| sandboxed but from an user pov, it just run.
|
| Plus the security features, you cannot break into a locked
| GOS. Oh the cops, airport wanna take your phone by force??
| Good luck!!
|
| We receive security updates that other phones can take up to
| 6 months to receive.
|
| You don't need to have a bachelor degree, an engineer to use
| GOS, it is not a hobby either.
|
| Ironically, GOS makes me waste less time with phone, there
| are days that my battery is still like 78% by bed time.
|
| You use your phone more wisely, banking, news, social media
| if you are into it, stock market, etc, without letting
| Google, Samsung, Apple to harvest your shit.
| palata wrote:
| > At my age, I'm not looking for my phone to become a hobby.
|
| I have been trying Linux on mobile. This is a hobby.
|
| I have been using GrapheneOS... honestly it's just like a
| normal Android after two steps:
|
| 1. Install GrapheneOS (their installer is _incredibly good_ ,
| it just works).
|
| 2. From the GrapheneOS store, install the Play Store (it's
| like 3 taps).
|
| After that it's a normal Android, except it's more secure and
| you get updates (meaning that you are on the latest version
| of Android, always).
| hnben wrote:
| did you have issues with banking apps, authenticator apps
| or outlook on workprofile?
|
| I ask, because when I was using cyanogenmod a hundred years
| ago, banking apps were a major pain. And now I am using
| outlook on a flagship with stockrom, and outlook on
| workprofile is still a major pain, and I can easily
| imagine, it working even worse on grapheneos.
| palata wrote:
| > outlook on workprofile?
|
| I don't have outlook, but Teams works normally, as far as
| I can tell
|
| > authenticator apps
|
| No issues there with the Microsoft Authenticator and
| Yubico Authenticator.
|
| > banking apps
|
| My banking apps work, but that's not the case for all of
| them. I would personally change bank rather than leaving
| GrapheneOS. The annoying part could be work apps (I
| wouldn't want to have a second phone just for work), but
| my bank I can change :-).
| adamnemecek wrote:
| Gradually develop an OS that is not just an Android fork, but a
| full blown OS people can contribute to. And of course write it
| in Rust, like the problems with Java are so apparent in
| Android.
| bastardoperator wrote:
| Consumers dont care about OSS, most people dont feel enslaved,
| and the only market share they'll dent is Android/Google. If
| we're getting more android slop, I'll pass.
| poulpy123 wrote:
| I don't think open source can get a big market share but it can
| give you a nice niche market of tech enthusiasts if they play
| their hand well.
|
| For that they need to not let the development of the OS to just
| the graphene os team, and to have competitive hardware,
| software and prices.
| slicktux wrote:
| By Motorola partnering with Graphene it will allow them to
| get a bigger market share and also help create a niche market
| for open source... It's a win win
| hnben wrote:
| > I don't think open source can get a big market share but it
| can give you a nice niche market of tech enthusiasts
|
| companies and governments in Europe start embracing digital
| sovereignty. Governments start to realize, that US
| corporations lie, when they say they won't spy on governments
| officials.
|
| I am not saying, that Europe WILL increase opensource and
| sovereignty, but odds are good, that a cultural shift away
| from US-dependence will happen soon, which would include
| embracing of Opensource
| samantha-wiki wrote:
| I agree strongly with this. I would ditch my iPhone in a
| heartbeat for an open source alternative.
| yiiii wrote:
| GrapheneOS is already existing and pretty usable!
| burner420042 wrote:
| I'm sure the enthusiasm is appreciated but Graphene is very
| different even from stock Android. It's not simple enough for
| mainstream, and UI is odd.
|
| I'm typing this on an iPhone and my pixel 10 graphene is just
| to my left. It's my favorite Android distro but I wouldn't
| daily it.
|
| I love how boring and quiet the OS is though. It doesn't try
| for engagement. Battery life remains very good. The distro is
| close to being what the Microsoft phone wanted to be.
| palata wrote:
| > It's not simple enough for mainstream, and UI is odd.
|
| It's exactly the same UI as Stock Android on a Google
| Pixel. If you find GrapheneOS' UI odd, then Android is just
| not for you, I guess?
| burner420042 wrote:
| This response lacks thought and is argumentative.
|
| The UI is not the same nor are the app defaults. Combined
| they create a different UX from stock Android.
|
| The default graphene App Store, and expected apps found
| there are different than Google Play or what you'd find
| on Google Play.
|
| The default permissions of each app are restrictive, most
| notable when you start mixing App Stores.
|
| F-Droid culture, and the app options, are their own
| thing.
|
| Vanadium, the graphene messaging app, the lack of forced
| updates and nag buttons.
|
| Exploit protection compat mode for banking apps.
|
| Motorola isn't selling to you or the other person that
| responded. For that market graphene will have an
| unexpected learning curve.
| palata wrote:
| I don't know how to answer to this, other than you
| seemingly don't know Android so much.
|
| Everything you describe here is normal on all Android
| (e.g. differences of UI or differences of default apps).
| F-Droid has nothing to do with GrapheneOS.
|
| > Exploit protection compat mode for banking apps.
|
| This is the only caveat: _some_ (not all) banking apps
| are annoying.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > I'm sure the enthusiasm is appreciated but Graphene is
| very different even from stock Android.
|
| I'm daily driving a Pixel 9a with GrapheneOS and I strongly
| disagree, at least from an ordinary usage perspective. Yes,
| you can _make_ it very different (by not installing Google
| Play), but with the sandboxed Google Play it 's exceedingly
| rare for me to notice any differences; it feels very close
| to any other stock-ish Android. The only big differences
| were RCS chats failing w/ T-Mobile (but that's been fixed)
| and some apps being mean about Play Integrity or whatever
| (but that's gonna be true of any custom ROM, even if it's
| entirely unmodified from AOSP).
| fsflover wrote:
| Librem 5 runs an FSF-endorsed operating system, PureOS.
| branon wrote:
| I want so badly to try one of these but it's been out for a
| while and I'm terrified they'll announce another one
| immediately after I make the purchase...
| fsflover wrote:
| It's unlikely that they release a new phone soon. They
| didn't even upstream all drivers for this one yet, and
| the OS is currently based on an old Debian version:
|
| https://forums.puri.sm/t/when-and-how-to-jump-to-
| crimson/300...
|
| https://puri.sm/posts/pureos-crimson-development-report-
| dece...
|
| Also, they are expected to release two new laptops in the
| near future, which was postponed a few times:
|
| https://forums.puri.sm/t/is-the-
| librem-16-cancelled/22269/11
|
| https://forums.puri.sm/t/2026-february-15-16-newsletter/3
| 028...
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| 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.
| sznio wrote:
| 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.
| ekjhgkejhgk wrote:
| 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.
| maxloh wrote:
| > Lenovo originated as an offshoot of a state-owned research
| institute.
|
| From Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lenovo
| bastard_op wrote:
| 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.
| throawayonthe wrote:
| 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...
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| fwipsy wrote:
| Adding graphene doesn't extend the support lifespan, it still
| depends on manufacturers for low-level security patches.
| KurSix wrote:
| The update story has definitely been Motorola's weak spot
| egorfine wrote:
| 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,
| strcat wrote:
| GrapheneOS is a separate thing from their own operating
| systems.
| backscratches wrote:
| 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)
| gib444 wrote:
| > 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 PS999
| phone. Ridiculous!
| dagmx wrote:
| It's not just a cost saving measure. PWM has some benefits
| like better accuracy and linearity in the lower brightness
| ranges.
| wishfish wrote:
| 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).
| backscratches wrote:
| Agreed. An IPS graphene phone would be perfect.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| iphones ship an accessibility toggle to disable PWM.
| backscratches wrote:
| So do pixel 10 series with Graphene (though it is only a
| small improvement). All other pixels are even worse with zero
| mitigations.
| unselect5917 wrote:
| what's it called? searching Settings for "pulse", "width",
| and "modulation" all produce no results.
| fragmede wrote:
| Settings - Accessibility - Display & Text Size - Reduce
| White Point
|
| Also Display Pulse Smoothing (PWM) if you're on Tahoe.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| The setting is called "display pulse smoothing" (the
| description says it WILL disable PWM) and is available in
| iOS 26, not sure about earlier versions.
| c8Alihackermanv wrote:
| India news channel hack
| amelius wrote:
| But where is the EU?
|
| They should be funding FOSS like they are funding science.
| nicce wrote:
| Don't they already fund more than anyone else? Not saying that
| it is currently enough.
| sfdlkj3jk342a wrote:
| 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.
| holgerschurig wrote:
| You have a very narrow view of the EU. The EU isn't a single
| body, dictated by some common mind.
|
| We have the EU Parliament, the EU Council, the EU Commission.
| Often they have different views in itself (e.g. factions in
| EU Parliament, or commissars in the commission that are more
| end-user-friendly vs. ones that are move business-friendly).
| And the EU Council (the ring of head-of-member-states) is
| more often than not just of one opinion, e.g. thing at Poland
| when it was governed by PiS. Or of Hungary and to some
| smaller extend Slovakia.
|
| "The EU wants ..." is therefore quite often wrong.
| raffael_de wrote:
| as long as the EU is headed by a woman who habitually loses
| SMS messages negotiating billion euro deals i figure the
| assessment you question is spot on.
| homarp wrote:
| is that what you mean?
| https://www.eclaireur.eu/p/following-the-sms-scandal-von-
| der
| raincole wrote:
| https://fightchatcontrol.eu/
|
| If out of 720 MEPs, 568 are supporting Chat Control, then
| yes, I think it's very fair to say "The EU wants...".
| AnssiH wrote:
| That site lists many of candidates as "support" just
| because they have not publicly opposed, so it is not a
| realistic view on the opinions of EU parliament. Better
| to look at actual votes cast.
|
| Also, they are not distinguishing between supporting
| mandatory monitoring and other forms (e.g. present legal
| situation where monitoring is allowed).
|
| The current proposals do not include mandatory
| monitoring. If mandatory chatcontrol had the wide support
| that site suggests, it would have been introduced and
| passed long ago.
| stavros wrote:
| If it's been trying to get passed for years and hasn't
| yet, I think it's fair to say the EU very much doesn't
| want.
| mcdonje wrote:
| If they can't get it passed because the people don't want
| it, then why do they keep trying to pass it? Some
| entities with a lot of power or influence clearly want
| it. This is the same thing we see in the US. We keep
| saying "no", and they keep trying.
|
| Maybe the EU people don't want it, but at least some
| governing body of the EU clearly does.
|
| There's a comment not too far up in this thread saying
| this is more of a US thing than an EU thing, but it looks
| like exactly the same pattern from where I'm sitting in
| the US.
| stavros wrote:
| "Someone in the EU wants it" and "the EU wants it" are
| very different things.
| mcdonje wrote:
| Synecdoche. The EU governmental body is acting like it
| wants it.
| stavros wrote:
| And, again, that's not the EU.
| yownie wrote:
| if you truly dig down it's the US and of all people
| Ashton Kutcher (https://mullvad.net/en/why-privacy-
| matters/going-dark) who are pushing this. So they can
| then point to the EU and say "they do it so why not do it
| here?"
| victorbjorklund wrote:
| I think you are talking about Trump and Palantir. That is
| more US thing.
| troupo wrote:
| > If anything they'll push regulations that make them illegal
| to own.
|
| And this inane take is based on what exactly?
|
| Not on recent regulations that literally force companies to
| open up and interoperate?
| amelius wrote:
| Check this reply:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47216751
| Fervicus wrote:
| They are busy pushing Chat Control.
| scientism wrote:
| 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...
| urza wrote:
| EU will put strong statement out soon.
| mastermage wrote:
| even the science funding isn't that great sadly. Someone realy
| needs to explain to the EU people how important an Independant
| Tech and Technology stack would be.
| petterroea wrote:
| 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...
| mendelmaleh wrote:
| 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?
| flexagoon wrote:
| 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
| worldsavior wrote:
| For what I understood is that he's just stepped down as lead
| developer.
| strcat wrote:
| You're correct. Dmytro Mukhomor is the lead developer of
| GrapheneOS.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| flexagoon wrote:
| I'm aware of what happened, and I'm getting GOS news
| directly, not from HN. However, you're still the biggest
| contributor of code to GOS (judging by commit history).
| That's what I meant.
| gib444 wrote:
| > and I'm getting GOS news directly, not from HN
|
| And from a director themselves! strcat is one of the
| directors in case you didn't know (Daniel). Which makes
| his reply quite bizarre
| DaSHacka wrote:
| lol why is every post even hinting at criticizing Daniel
| or the GrapheneOS project getting downvoted in this
| thread
|
| Was doing the rounds when I noticed one of my comments
| with very light criticism (if you can even call it that)
| got entirely flagged, and seems I'm not alone?
| joemazerino wrote:
| GrapheneOS community has groups setup to mass flag and
| report posts they don't like. See examples from
| Techlore's video
|
| https://youtu.be/Dx7CZ-2Bajg?si=dLfbvGcIF9Zi4kEv
| gib444 wrote:
| > lol why is every post even hinting at criticizing
| Daniel or the GrapheneOS project getting downvoted in
| this thread
|
| I know right. The victim card as a way to dodge answers
| is getting a bit boring, to be honest.
|
| As a GrapheneOS user, it's seriously putting me off. (On
| top of the gaslighting over the years about how every bug
| must be a hardware fault)
| gib444 wrote:
| That is a pretty poor and disappointing reply to be honest.
|
| They asked a reasonable question and you barely even
| responded to anything they asked. The community deserves a
| response to the question.
|
| What with this new chapter, it might be better for someone
| else to handle PR and comms for the project
|
| (Signed, passionate GrapheneOS user of a few years)
| codethief wrote:
| +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.
| ta9000 wrote:
| How so wrt Signal?
| codethief wrote:
| What are donations being spent on, who makes those
| decisions, what's the roadmap, what's up with MobileCoin,
| why the hell do they put so much trust into Intel SGX when
| there are so many known vulnerabilities, ...
|
| I've been a Signal/TextSecure user since day one and have
| convinced many dozens of people to switch to Signal but,
| man, they don't exactly make it easy to be a fan.
| mmooss wrote:
| Isn't their CEO well known?
| codethief wrote:
| So?
| mmooss wrote:
| You said you don't know who makes the decisions.
| codethief wrote:
| Meredith Whittaker is not a techie AFAIK. Either way, I'd
| just like to know more about the thought process going
| into Signal's product and engineering decisions. The
| Signal team seems extraordinarily tight-lipped and that
| doesn't exactly inspire trust from where I stand.
| mmooss wrote:
| Their blog has (or had?) some extensive technical
| explanations, for example about their implemenation of
| features utilizing SGX.
| ta9000 wrote:
| Have you heard her speak? She seems pretty bright to me.
| aniviacat wrote:
| 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
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| neilv wrote:
| Thank you, to you and the rest of the team, for your work on
| GrapheneOS!
|
| If I may make a suggestion: as GrapheneOS becomes more
| popular, perhaps it's time to better establish users' trust
| in the control over it.
|
| When the project was primarily you, who was already known for
| technical prowess and a principled exit from a different
| project, that was enough for many enthusiasts.
|
| But as both the team and the user base have grown (and,
| secondarily, the outside world has become less stable), a new
| infusion of confidence in trustworthiness would help.
|
| I'm not sure how to do that, but it may include communicating
| who is involved (not just names, but why they should be
| trusted), and what safeguards there are against mistakes and
| compromised/rogue individuals.
|
| I say this because GrapheneOS may be the best candidate for a
| trustworthy smartphone platform right now, and I hope for the
| best followthrough and success of that.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Why should privacy-oriented individuals be forced to dox
| themselves? There is a company that should be able to stand
| on its own reputation or not.
| neilv wrote:
| You need more than a corporate reputation.
|
| We're an entire industry of liars and poseurs.
|
| It would be easy to make even a completely bad-actor
| company with years of stellar reputation.
|
| Either as a sleeper for some future big attack, or one
| that only rarely and secretly takes action against very
| high value targets.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| And how will a name and address prevent that?
| neilv wrote:
| I don't think I said anything about an address. They've
| given some names, but that doesn't say why they should be
| trusted.
|
| Two examples of people who have established some trust
| over the years: Linus Torvalds and RMS.
|
| Joking scenario to illustrate...
|
| Badguy: "This is it, Torvalds! Give us the Linux launch
| codes, or I shoot you!"
|
| Torvalds: "Launch codes? I'm angry that you are wasting
| everyone's time, when clearly you don't know what you are
| doing, and are not bothering to get help to do it
| properly."
|
| Badguy: "How about your friend! Give us the codes, or I
| shoot Stallman!"
|
| Stallman: "Excuse me, but when you say Linux, I think you
| mean GNU/Linux, since Linux is a kernel, which is only
| one piece of the operating system, and used with--"
|
| Badguy: "Argh! I can't take you nerds anymore!" _shoots
| self in head_
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| Thank you for your work. What would you say the future holds
| for the project? Is it in good hands?
| Avamander wrote:
| 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.
| ysnp wrote:
| > _some odd ideas about trust and PKIs._
|
| Can you explain what you mean?
| rkagerer wrote:
| Without criticizing or implying any conspiracy theories, I did
| find it odd where the news release quoted "a spokesperson at
| GrapheneOS" without attributing it.
|
| We badly need alternative(s) like GrapheneOS, and I want to see
| it succeed. I hope as the project matures, the sense of
| professionalism and stability it projects will strengthen. For
| what it's worth, I personally feel the business partnership is
| a step toward that end, and am _really_ happy to see some
| manufacturer diversity.
| summm wrote:
| 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."
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| gib444 wrote:
| The project can't have had too many options in a partner, give
| them a break.
| noirscape wrote:
| 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.
| adrian_b wrote:
| 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.
| sourcecodeplz wrote:
| What do you mean desktop mode? I though only Samsung Android
| phones had that, called Samsung DeX.
| codethief wrote:
| Android 16 introduced desktop mode.
| noisem4ker wrote:
| The first-party desktop mode that was introduced in Android
| 16 last year.
|
| https://android-
| developers.googleblog.com/2025/06/developer-...
| esperent wrote:
| A _lot_ of phones, including latest flagships, don 't
| support this, unfortunately.
| trashb wrote:
| Motorolla has had a similar desktop experience for a while.
| For example my Moto G100 has this feature since 2021. It
| actually works quite good, I really liked that your
| touchscreen turns into a mousepad in these modes.
|
| I believe it is called "Motorolla Ready For" the marketing is
| not great (a bit confusing name if you ask me).
| strcat wrote:
| GrapheneOS has hardware-based virtualization on the Pixel 6
| and later along with DisplayPort alternate mode on the Pixel
| 8 and later. It has the standard Android 16 QPR2 desktop mode
| and Terminal VM management app capable of running GUI
| applications for other operating systems. We could even add
| Windows support, but we have much higher priorities for the
| foreseeable future.
| hocuspocus wrote:
| Most mid to high-end ranges from Android OEMs have a
| DisplayPort video output and basic keyboard plus mouse
| support. Pixels were late to the party, but it's been there
| for a long time otherwise.
|
| The functionality used to be really barebones outside of
| Samsung DeX. Now it's a bit better since it's officially
| supported by Google.
| strcat wrote:
| Bear in mind it will solely be future devices which are
| supported. They're being developed and aren't launched yet.
| negative_zero wrote:
| Any chance of having a finger print scanner on the back of
| the phone?
|
| I personally really dislike the screen ones. They're slower,
| less reliable and the location is unnatural.
| worksonmine wrote:
| Mine (really cheap G05) has it on the power button, much
| better than the back where it used to be on older models.
| Motorola have been innovative with the UX. It lights up
| when I pick it up, shake twice to toggle flashlight
| (extremely useful when looking for dog poop) and so on.
| Only brand I've considered for about a decade.
| mihalycsaba wrote:
| Shake to toggle flashlight is the one feature that makes
| people ask about my phone.
| backscratches wrote:
| Unfortunately many Motorola phones (even flagship) do NOT do
| video out.
| IG_Semmelweiss wrote:
| the MOTOROLA ATRIX [1] paired with its Ubuntu lapdock [2] ...
| from 15 years ago (2011) would like to disagree!
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lapdock
| xethos wrote:
| Countering "most Motorola phones don't support video out"
| by going back a decade and a half to find a single example
| is not the argument-ending line you seem to think it is
| yogurtboy wrote:
| Chill dude, I think they were being a little glib
| I_am_tiberius wrote:
| I was so much hoping it was Fairphone.
| flexagoon wrote:
| Unfortunately fairphone has repeatedly shown they don't care
| about hardware security
| teekert wrote:
| 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.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| rarisma wrote:
| Give me a graphene os phone moto, my money will be yours.
| Vinnl wrote:
| So what does this mean? Are they going to ship GrapheneOS by
| default? Or just making it easier for GrapheneOS to support
| Motorola phones?
| waysa wrote:
| I assume Graphene is goning to be an option next to the default
| google-cerfified Android. Like Fairphone ships e/os as an
| option.
| strcat wrote:
| 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.
| raffael_de wrote:
| 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
| StingyJelly wrote:
| I hope that in they choose the same camera sensors pixels use.
| Hard to beat the processing gcam can do.
| ROllerozxa wrote:
| Give it a month and the partnership will be in shambles after the
| GrapheneOS social account makes vague unverifiable accusations of
| alleged Motorola employees sending death threats to GrapheneOS
| contributors while praising other custom ROMs.
| jaimex2 wrote:
| It's OnePlus all over again.
| strcat wrote:
| No, it doesn't resemble that at all.
| em-bee wrote:
| what's the story here? got a link?
| zouhair wrote:
| Now do Samsung
| strcat wrote:
| That would be entirely up to Samsung. It's not likely.
| drewfax wrote:
| Samsung phones and TVs have tons of adware built in. I'm pretty
| sure they won't want GrapheneOS on their phones. Motorola, on
| the other hand, has always shipped stock OS with minor
| customization. The only problem with Motorola is that their
| support is very short (like 2 years).
| joshuaissac wrote:
| According to their site, they used to support Samsung a long
| time ago but Samsung made changes in newer handsets that closed
| off access to the secure element.
| danielEM wrote:
| 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.
| vdm wrote:
| Almost, local automatic speech recognition with model choice
| (Parakeet this month) is what keeps me on Mac and away from
| Chromebook Plus or Android Desktop
| jathul wrote:
| Nokia 1101 is safer than all smartphones, just saying.
| PokemonNoGo wrote:
| Wasn't that the model used to hack a banking app?
| rm30 wrote:
| 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.
| Justin-1x wrote:
| Chinese GrapheneOS is coming
| leke wrote:
| I would buy a cheap Moto with GOS in a heartbeat
| utopiah wrote:
| 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.
| gt6 wrote:
| Hau to hack
| gclawes wrote:
| Could this be a road to getting GrapheneOS approved under Play
| Integrity (for contactless payments, etc)?
| worldsavior wrote:
| Maybe, probably not.
| drnick1 wrote:
| I don't think so, since Play Integrity is incompatible with
| open source.
| Ajedi32 wrote:
| Right, my understanding is that the whole point of "device
| integrity" is for a device manufacturer that your bank trusts
| to be able to vouch that your device is "secure". If the
| device is under your control rather than the manufacturer's
| (as would generally be the case with an open source OS), they
| can't credibly make such guarantees.
| BlueSialia wrote:
| I have degoogled my devices wherever I can. One of the main
| reasons I don't use an open source ROM is because I use my phone
| as my laptop thanks to lapdocks. Motorola's Ready For is the
| Android Desktop I use daily and I'd love to use a GrapheneOS-like
| ROM with that included.
| ThePowerOfFuet wrote:
| GrapheneOS has supported connections to external displays (and
| mouse/keyboard) for some time now.
| aesh2Xa1 wrote:
| @strcat, you've mentioned GrapheneOS will have access to internal
| code to do hardening below the OS layer. Does this mean Motorola
| devices will offer stronger security than Pixels, where you're
| limited by what Google exposes?
|
| Is Motorola contributing engineering resources directly to
| GrapheneOS, or is the partnership purely about hardware
| enablement on their side?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Maybe we'll get Graphene on US market phones that Lineage won't
| target.
| akrakesh wrote:
| Finally, seems like a real possibility of ditching my Apple
| device (never used Android because of Google)
| nuodag wrote:
| unfortunately every single Motorola phone is ridiculously large
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| All phones are ridiculously large today, though. I rocked an
| iPhone SE 1st gen for a lot longer than I probably should have.
| I miss the form factor every day. I hate being a market segment
| that's too small to matter to anybody.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Does this mean that Google has dropped the "if you release a
| phone running a fork of Android you lose access to Play Services"
| thing?
| nickorlow wrote:
| Technically Motorola isn't releasing a running fork of android,
| they're just making their handsets to GOS' spec.
| LinAGKar wrote:
| They already can't have had such a requirement, since the
| Fairphone can be bought with either Google apps or /e/OS.
| seany wrote:
| The real thing they need to be behind is getting app makers to
| ignore Google Play integrity
| Collectivism wrote:
| I can only dream for a new special edition of the Motorola
| Flipout with GraphenOS included !
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| A Moto phone with GrapheneOS and the "chop / chop" gesture[0] to
| turn on the flashlight would be a dream.
|
| I'm, shamefully, an adherent to Moto hardware now because of that
| silly gesture. I use it multiple times a day. I had a friend with
| a late model Pixel try to replicate the functionality and he
| couldn't come up with a way to do it. It's silly, but it's too
| handy.
|
| [0] https://en-
| us.support.motorola.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1...
| nhubbard wrote:
| One of the important reasons that it works so well is because
| it uses the Hexagon DSP in the Snapdragon processors to catch
| the events. That's why it's so hard to replicate. It's possible
| to do it entirely in software, but it chews through battery if
| you do it that way. I can't find it now, but there was an
| article a few years ago that explained how the feature worked.
|
| And there's no way to program the DSP without being the creator
| of the device because Qualcomm requires DSP programs to be
| signed, as far as I'm aware, and the key has to be trusted by
| the device vendor.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| Wild. Thanks for the keywords to search-engine this with. I
| found "Reverse engineering the Motorola Sensorhub: Part
| 1"[0]. To this point I hadn't thought about how they might
| have implemented the feature. That article sheds some light
| on it.
|
| [0] https://ristovski.github.io/posts/moto-sensorhub/
| nhubbard wrote:
| That's the one!
| microsoftedging wrote:
| This one? https://www.xda-developers.com/qualcomm-
| snapdragon-845-hexag...
| nhubbard wrote:
| That's the right chip. The other comment shows off the
| article. I forgot that it was called the "sensor hub",
| that's why I couldn't find the post showing how it works.
| rkagerer wrote:
| Neat. I wired the flashlight to a long press of the Bixby
| button on my S10+.
| EvanAnderson wrote:
| I probably would have settled for a button, but the gesture
| is so nice. (There's also a "twist" gesture to activate the
| camera. It's also nice. I haven't ever gotten false positives
| with the gestures and they have become second nature. I never
| used any gestures before having a Moto phone and always
| thought accelerometer-based input was gimmicky and unreliable
| based on my experience with prior phones.)
| greazy wrote:
| The chop chop gesture is amazing. I love my G3 unfortunately it
| stopped recieving updates :( some apps are starting to get
| funky in weird ways
| rafabulsing wrote:
| Totally agreed. That one silly gesture is the one thing still
| keeping me with Motorola, it really has become second nature.
| It's almost bizarre how I immediately do it as soon as I'm in
| any kind of darkness. I had to spend a couple of months with a
| phone from another brand and it was actually really annoying
| not having that!
|
| That said, the software on my current phone has become bad
| enough (lack of updates only a couple of years after release,
| auto installing of bloatware every so often) that I had vowed
| that my next phone would not be a Motorola, probably I was
| going for a Samsung (Pixels are too expensive where I live).
|
| But this announcement might just be the thing that keeps me on
| the Moto train. I'm really hoping this works out.
| jcul wrote:
| It's funny, but double tapping the power button to switch on
| the light is one of the things I miss the most when using
| GrapheneOS.
|
| Most android phones I've had have had this feature, either
| double press or long press to get light.
|
| GrapheneOS means you have to turn on the screen, pull down the
| quick access, and turn on that way. It's quick enough, but it
| means squinting at a bright screen in the middle of the night.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Motorola consistently has great stuff that then just rot on store
| shelves. This will be yet another. They just can't convert
| hardware innovation into hard sales. They've been kicked around
| too much this century by Lenovo and Google and shareholders. They
| just don't have the culture to marry good hardware with good
| software anymore.
| butz wrote:
| I was hoping that GrapheneOS would partner with Sony, but alas.
| Motorola Moto G (2014) was a great phone. They should bring back
| devices in similar form factor and no camera bumps. 3.5mm
| headphone jack wouldn't hurt anyone either. And make cover from
| decent material, not the one that becomes sticky after several
| years.
| mmooss wrote:
| I wish GrapheneOS the best. If their mission is user security and
| freedom, transparency is necessary. As far as I can tell, there
| is little public information or indications of trust. Daniel
| Micay posts on this thread that the names of the directors
| (Micay, Dmytro Mukhomor, and Khalykbek Yelshibekov) is publicly
| available, but that is very little information and isn't nearly
| sufficient to facilitate trust.
|
| Their website grapheneos.org says nothing I can find about who or
| what is behind it; that is a red flag. I don't think Micay or
| Mukhomor are even mentioned. Github doesn't seem to say much
| either (not that end users will know about or look at Github).
|
| I read that Mukhomor is running things, which is something I just
| learned despite following GrapheneOS - was there an annoucement?
| Is Mukhomor's bio anywhere? Who the heck is Mukhomor? Users'
| privacy depends on that person - very few have the time and
| ability to audit the code, and probably nobody has the ability
| and time to audit the code thoroughly enough that we don't need
| to trust Mukhomor, as well as Micay, Yelshibekov, and probably
| others we don't know about. Why should I trust Mukhomor,
| Khalykbek, and the unknown others?
|
| Also, Google and Motorola, part of Lenovo which is subject to the
| Chinese government [0], are not the most encouraging partners. I
| know all the debate behind it and perhaps there are no good
| alternatives and I'm glad GrapheneOS is diversifying its
| hardware, but GrapheneOS should provide openness on why they
| trust Google and Motorola.
|
| I have reasons to trust Linus Torvalds and other Linux leaders,
| Theo de Raadt, Mozilla, and many others - not perfect reasons,
| but some indications. I have reasons to trust Daniel Micay based
| on history and public activities.
|
| [0] I know Google can be influenced by the US government; it's
| not the same thing but indeed also an issue, especially with the
| current administration's embrace of pressuring business and
| against individual freedom (e.g., Anthropic).
| mayhemducks wrote:
| I tend to be pretty skeptical in general, so grain of salt may be
| required here, but I sense some irony that the Chinese government
| has a significant stake in Lenovo.
|
| https://easytechsolver.com/who-is-lenovo-owned-by/
| https://www.kamilfranek.com/who-owns-lenovo-largest-sharehol...
|
| How did we end up touting privacy features while at the same time
| celebrating the acquisition of this company by a business backed
| by a state obsessed with censorship and surveillance?
| nickorlow wrote:
| I would imagine China's goal (if any with this, which I really
| doubt) is to harm google by eroding their monopoly on mobile
| operating systems.
| RedComet wrote:
| Here's to hoping for a smaller phone with a fingerprint sensor on
| the back and a removable battery, as it's a given graphene will
| get the chipset right.
| CivBase wrote:
| This is excellent news. Hopefully Motorola will soon produce a
| GraphineOS-compatible device that meets my needs.
|
| Although I seem to curse whatever company I buy a smartphone
| from. My last three devices were from HTC, LG, and Sony.
| Hopefully Motorola doesn't share the same fate.
| butILoveLife wrote:
| Hypeee! Love my $120 motorola, super cheap, works almost as good
| as my pixel, has a headphone jack.
| upmind wrote:
| TIL that Motorola is 3rd in market share in the US, albeit only
| 3-5% but still insane it's above Google.
|
| (NOTE: this is according to LLM)
| upmind wrote:
| To be honest, I don't think I've ever met someone with a
| Motorola.
| smlavine wrote:
| I like mine. the moto g line of phones are like $200,
| unlocked. They're fast enough for anything I do with a phone.
| It runs android. It's fine. I've thought about GrapheneOS
| before but I a) don't want to give Google money to rely less
| on Google and b) Pixels are expensive. If Motorola can change
| those points then I'd definitely be interested.
| drnick1 wrote:
| I doubt that the model with Graphene will be $200. If it's
| a $1000 phone it's dead on arrival however. The best we can
| hope for I think is something priced close to a Pixel
| a-series, a comfortable mid-range.
| upmind wrote:
| Might buy one tbh
| iamdamian wrote:
| This is, without hyperbole, the most exciting tech announcement
| I've read this year. I really hope something comes of it.
|
| Motorola: Please double down on this and make mobile tech
| consumer-friendly again.
| jama211 wrote:
| [flagged]
| dang wrote:
| Could you please stop posting snarky and/or aggressive and/or
| unsubstantive comments? You've been doing it repeatedly,
| unfortunately. It's not what this site is for, and destroys
| what it is for.
|
| If you wouldn't mind reviewing
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html and taking
| the intended spirit of the site more to heart, we'd be
| grateful.
| jama211 wrote:
| Piss off mate, what I said obviously wasn't snarky and
| wasn't meant that way. What you're doing is targeted
| attacks, so take up your own rules with yourself.
| dang wrote:
| I wasn't just talking about one comment, but about a
| pattern of commenting - here are other examples:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47221945
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47183702
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47178118
|
| We're trying for something else on this site and need you
| to stop posting like that if you want to be on HN.
| KurSix wrote:
| If Motorola actually delivers unlockable, well-supported hardware
| that GrapheneOS endorses, this could finally break the Pixel
| monopoly in the hardened Android space
| yougotwill wrote:
| Hell yeah! I was really hoping they were teaming up with Motorola
| when they teased about this earlier!
|
| Love my g54.
| mbix77 wrote:
| Very excited for this! Just recently moved my Google Pixel Pro 10
| to GrapheneOS.
| ysnp wrote:
| It took a while but congrats to Daniel Micay and GrapheneOS.
| Hopefully it is the first of a few (looking at you HMD, Sony,
| Samsung, Nothing).
|
| Will Motorola allowlist/whitelist GrapheneOS's avb key for green
| boot state? Does that have any implications for Play Integrity?
|
| Do GrapheneOS finally get AOSP full partner access as a result of
| this? Will the Motorola device have USB port control, OS
| virtualisation and GPU virtualisation? Will it have a better
| secure face unlock story than Pixel 5 - 10?
|
| Will the gushing fans and secret admirers finally stop flocking
| to me because I switched from Pixel-GrapheneOS to Motorola-
| GrapheneOS?
| haiserize wrote:
| graphene OS have been public that they have had full partner
| access for a while now, didnt say who exactly it was until
| motorola announced it now
| ysnp wrote:
| They said they have access to security previews/patches but I
| have missed that they have full AOSP access now? Do you have
| a link?
| iamnothere wrote:
| Great. Please make a Graphene OS phone with a physical
| camera/mic/gyro killswitch. Thank you!
| neuroelectron wrote:
| Won't be long until Trump declares war on Motorola and takes out
| the head of Mototollah in a preemptive strike in order to protect
| competition and ensure market fairness. But most importantly of
| all, to ensure Palantir and national security can still be
| provided to our strongest allies. It's not a leadership change
| operation. Just a 72-hour operation.
| vldszn wrote:
| Motorola is back
| narenkeshav wrote:
| Motorola, I am in. I like your phones so far. With this, please
| create a 'flagship' that would endure for years.
|
| Security must be top notch for corporate espionage. Banking apps
| must install without any issue. In India, please provide
| solutions for UPI.
|
| Make your OS clean like nothing. Pun NOT intended.
| Animats wrote:
| "Today, Motorola also introduced Moto Analytics, an enterprise-
| grade analytics platform designed to give IT administrators real-
| time visibility into device performance across their fleet."
|
| So they put in a back door for business users?
| tsoukase wrote:
| Imagine the boost to Linux if Microsoft completely locks down
| Windows, not allowing app installations. At first it will be a
| pain but after some time it will become a blessing for open
| source. This will happen in mobile devices.
| nickorlow wrote:
| Makes sense the thinkpad of phones would be the partner for this
|
| https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/phones/motorola-smartphones/t...
| worksonmine wrote:
| I've used Moto G series for years and reading this makes me very
| happy with my choice. They've found a market fit and this shows
| they know their audience.
| matheusmoreira wrote:
| This is amazing!! Hope this will make getting a GrapheneOS phone
| much easier! Motorola phones are easier to find here than Pixels.
| throwawaypath wrote:
| Motorola has a serious chance to completely shake up the industry
| and the walled gardens. This space is ripe for disruption. I hope
| they fund and adopt F-Droid as well.
| agentifysh wrote:
| very excited for this
|
| what i would love also is if you could bring GOS to a remake of
| the classic Razr phones with flip
| NoImmatureAdHom wrote:
| .gov would love a graphene-native phone if manufactured in the
| U.S. or by an American company
| h4kunamata wrote:
| Hell yeah, so Motorola is the OEM they have been quietly working
| with. Millennials are gonna lose their shit lmao
|
| Motorola used to be huge back in the day, and their come back
| couldn't have been more noisier, GOS is the only mobile operating
| system worth using in an era of age verification and privacy
| issues due to the heavy dependency on USA tech companies. Android
| is heavily customised by the OEMs like Samsung, Google, iPhone is
| just another nightmware apart.
|
| Linux is the most used OS worldwide, everything that our socienty
| depends on is running Linux, you might be using Windows, macOS,
| but the services and everything else is quietly running Linux.
|
| Windows is the main OS used by users/offices only, it is a very
| small number.
|
| Also, 2026 is the year Linux stopped living in the shadows!!
|
| We have to thank this all to AI, if Microslot handn't pushed AI
| so hard and destroyed Windows for end-users, and Steam with Linux
| alone proving to the gigantic gaming community that Linux can do
| the same and better, we wouldn't have Linux replacing end-
| users/offices computer that used to run Windows this fast.
|
| Thanks AI.
| rationalist wrote:
| Please have physical disconnect switches (Bluetooth/Wifi, Modem,
| Power, Microphone/Speaker), and integrated lens cover like Lenovo
| laptops (at least for the front camera whereas a case can cover
| the rear cameras).
|
| (Triple active SIM would be amazing, but one can dream.)
| pieter_mj wrote:
| This only means there will be a hardware backdoor.
| qwertytyyuu wrote:
| I'm not sure whether to be excited or concerned. Will this make
| Graphene OS less secure when authorities come knocking on their
| doors?
| foxes wrote:
| Everyone deserves private and secure defaults without having to
| manually install another os.
|
| I have plenty of non technical friends that care about security
| but don't come from technical backgrounds, but generally
| understand the problems google and apple have.
|
| Id recommend this to them in a heartbeat.
| aljgz wrote:
| Could it be? That my next phone and tablet match the freedom I
| have on my Amd frame.work running immutable fedora with KDE?
|
| If this happens, it will mark the slow end of an era, one fed up
| person at a time.
|
| Change comes gradually, and then suddenly
| gitowiec wrote:
| When there will be the first official Motorola smartphone with
| GrapheneOS?
| nh43215rgb wrote:
| Great job lenovo. Lets do GrapheneOS on Razr!
| foxyv wrote:
| Motorola seems to HATE updating their operating systems. They
| only support their phone OS for the minimum possible time. Moving
| to an open source platform makes way too much sense for them.
| This is one of the few ideas that might make me go back to buying
| Motorola products after dumping them for a Pixel.
|
| The question is, will my work apps be able to run on GrapheneOS?
| I'm really excited to find out.
| broadsidepicnic wrote:
| depends on work apps.
|
| I've only found two apps that dont work on graphene so far
| (google wallet and x). Decided I'd be able to survive without
| them.
| foxyv wrote:
| It depends entirely on the organization. The ones my corp
| runs have security policies which may or may not like
| Graphene. I've been thinking about making a phone dedicated
| to work and then keeping a separate personal phone.
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