alt Hacker NewsMotorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS
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This was figured out a while ago based on the hints given.
That said, I'm pretty excited. Motorola of the last decade or so has made really good hardware with basically stock firmware and a terrible update policy, which is why many avoid them. Seriously, they just offer quarterly updates on flagships, which is incredibly unsecure. Punting software to Graphene solves the biggest gripe many have.
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)
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?
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.
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.
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.
If Motorola actually delivers unlockable, well-supported hardware that GrapheneOS endorses, this could finally break the Pixel monopoly in the hardened Android space
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.
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...
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.
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?
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?
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.
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.
@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?
Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45585869
(At the time it wasn't public which OEM GrapheneOS would partner with.)
This is good. Having an alternative to Pixel-Phones for GOS makes sense. I wonder if we will have the option to buy a Motorola phone with GOS out of the box (not sure if i would trust that, but it might be interesting for some people that are skeptical of installing it on their Pixel by themselves).
But where is the EU?
They should be funding FOSS like they are funding science.
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.
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.
Makes sense the thinkpad of phones would be the partner for this
https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/phones/motorola-smartphones/t...
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...
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.
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.
This is amazing!! Hope this will make getting a GrapheneOS phone much easier! Motorola phones are easier to find here than Pixels.
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)
Excited for this, GrapheneOS teased this a few months back. I might finally move away from iOS.
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?
Very excited for this! Just recently moved my Google Pixel Pro 10 to GrapheneOS.
Could this be a road to getting GrapheneOS approved under Play Integrity (for contactless payments, etc)?
"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?
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.
So what does this mean? Are they going to ship GrapheneOS by default? Or just making it easier for GrapheneOS to support Motorola phones?
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.
The misspelling of "GrapehenOS" in the tags below the article does not bode well for Motorola... :)
Great. Please make a Graphene OS phone with a physical camera/mic/gyro killswitch. Thank you!
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.
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)
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
Give me a graphene os phone moto, my money will be yours.
Hell yeah! I was really hoping they were teaming up with Motorola when they teased about this earlier!
Love my g54.
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.
Hypeee! Love my $120 motorola, super cheap, works almost as good as my pixel, has a headphone jack.
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.
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.
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.
I would buy a cheap Moto with GOS in a heartbeat
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.
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.