Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

duckerude

Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45585869 (At the time it wasn't public which OEM GrapheneOS would partner with.)

jauntywundrkind

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.

Satuminus

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).

anon5739483

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.

globemaster99

Hope they make this partnership work out. Probably a 50-50 partnership.

jackhalford

Excited for this, GrapheneOS teased this a few months back. I might finally move away from iOS.

siwatanejo

/me stops buying Samsung and waits for next Motorola Flip

10729287

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.

silisili

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.

ggm

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?

Imustaskforhelp

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.

ddtaylor

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.

nunobrito

So they shaked hands with a long term NSA hardware contractor: https://www.motorolasolutions.com/newsroom/press-releases/na... Fantastic. Very secure.

hyfgfh

How about replaceable batteries?

phoronixrly

So... Graphene on a completely Lenovo (Chinese)-owned Motorola Mobility saying they focus more on security than other EU/US vendors. Bold strategy.

karlzt

Is this going to be cheaper than Pixel?

madduci

I really hope that the partnership involves support for low-end devices and not only high-end ones. Would be great to have a €200 Phone running GrapheneOS (e.g. G56)

tonydav

I hope Lenovo can add the auto call recording toggle in GrapheneOS.

pu_pe

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.

atoav

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.