Previously: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=45585869">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=45585869</a>(At the time it wasn&#x27;t public which OEM GrapheneOS would partner with.)

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.

They are different kinds of unlocked! Unlocked generally just means &quot;can be used with any carrier&quot;. For example this Samsung S22 I am on is &quot;unlocked&quot;.But Samsung hasn&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;s a mess and a half.

Really? That seems odd, where are you looking? Through your Carrier or just for unlocked devices? Depending on who you&#x27;re with, usually you can just grab an unlocked device and your Carrier to register the device. I&#x27;ve only ever used Google Fi and AT&amp;T though I&#x27;m not sure about the others.Searching duckduckgo for &#x27;Unlocked {device}&#x27; returns a lot of results on the shopping tab for phones on Amazon and eBay like the pixel 8&#x2F;9 plus plenty of other &quot;recent&quot; android devices. Walmart and Bestbuy seem to still have dedicated sections for unlocked phones as well.

Yes.  And once you have the unlock code, you can re-lock the bootloader and unlock it as many times as you want to.

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.

Alas that in the US it is seemingly impossible to get unlocked bootloaders now. I&#x27;m trying to figure out what couple-year-old international phone to buy now.Good on Motorola. Incredibly smart to tap these passionate geniuses.

I was going to ask wasn&#x27;t motorola bought and sold so many times that it ended up in Chinese hands. It ended up in Google&#x27;s hands instead... Ngl, kind of underwhelming from GrapheneEdit: wait, that&#x27;s old news, it is part of Lenovo...

No, Lenovo owns MotorolaGoogle owned it 2012-2014

Was, they sold it on to Lenovo in 2014.[ <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.lenovo.com&#x2F;pressroom&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;lenovo-completes-full-acquisition-motorola-mobility-from-google&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.lenovo.com&#x2F;pressroom&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;lenovo-comp...</a> ]

Google sold the company to Lenovo in 2014

Motorola was subsequently sold to Lenovo in 2014.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.lenovo.com&#x2F;pressroom&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;lenovo-completes-full-acquisition-motorola-mobility-from-google&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.lenovo.com&#x2F;pressroom&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;lenovo-comp...</a>

Only for two years: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.lenovo.com&#x2F;pressroom&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;lenovo-completes-full-acquisition-motorola-mobility-from-google&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.lenovo.com&#x2F;pressroom&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;lenovo-comp...</a>Didn&#x27;t you read the article? It&#x27;s kinda hard to miss the Lenovo all through the press release.

No it&#x27;s not. Google sold Motorola to Lenovo like a decade ago.

Literally the first three words of the announcement that this submission is about are &quot;Motorola, a Lenovo Company&quot;.

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.

Is that still up to date? On Motorola Mobility&#x27;s Wikipedia page [1] it says&gt; [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&#x27;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&#x27;s not a main shareholder.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Motorola_Mobility" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Motorola_Mobility</a>[2] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;investor.lenovo.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;ir&#x2F;shareholding.php" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;investor.lenovo.com&#x2F;en&#x2F;ir&#x2F;shareholding.php</a>[3] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Legend_Holdings" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Legend_Holdings</a>[4] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hkexnews.hk&#x2F;listedco&#x2F;listconews&#x2F;sehk&#x2F;2025&#x2F;0429&#x2F;2025042900001.pdf" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.hkexnews.hk&#x2F;listedco&#x2F;listconews&#x2F;sehk&#x2F;2025&#x2F;0429&#x2F;2...</a>

Same owner (Google&#x2F;Alphabet): <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.google&#x2F;company-news&#x2F;inside-google&#x2F;company-announcements&#x2F;weve-acquired-motorola-mobility&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;blog.google&#x2F;company-news&#x2F;inside-google&#x2F;company-annou...</a>

Indeed you can: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;install&#x2F;web#verifying-installation" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;install&#x2F;web#verifying-installation</a>

AFAIK you can verify the integrity of an existing GrapheneOS installation.

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).

&gt; I don’t think I have ever seen a Motorola smartphone in the wildProbably depends a lot on where you live tbh. Here in India it&#x27;s moderately common. I think Europe and Latin America also have a fair amount of sales.

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.

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 &#x2F; un-glue the phones through the front and remove the display. For this reason, the repair shops I have asked have said they don&#x27;t &#x27;do&#x27; Motorola phones because there&#x27;s too much risk in breaking the display.This effectively means that the life of the phone is determined by the ageing of the battery.

I bought a Motorola phone (G Stylus 2025) while in the US after discovering my brand new Sony Xperia VII phone would not work in upstate NY.It&#x27;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&#x27;s a wired fast charge feature that is incredibly fast. The Motorola was just 25% of the price and it&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;s iPhone in the same places. The selfie camera was excellent, though something about the rear camera I wasn&#x27;t quite as happy about. The Stylus is nice to have, but honestly I don&#x27;t use it as much as I thought I would.I wish there were more Motorola phones in Australia, I&#x27;ve probably become a Motorola &#x2F; Lenovo customer now. (I already use a Lenovo ThinkPad).For reference, my previous phones have been iPhone, Google, Samsung, Sony, now Motorola.

That&#x27;s not the one. and of course they do and I&#x27;m super happy to hear about that partnership. I highly recommend checking them out!A year ago I got a &quot;10 month old flagship&quot; 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 &quot;non-s&quot; 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 :OIt also has great optically stabilized camera (with some challenges when it comes to &quot;shutter speed&quot; - it does a lot of processing so your photos are sometimes timed awkwardly), amazing low light for main camera, but that&#x27;s a rabbit hole I don&#x27;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 &quot;vanilla&quot; as people claim. Still better than most things around and in the end I was able to trivially remove everything I don&#x27;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&#x27;m really impressed by that, I don&#x27;t see any real drawbacks compared to Samsung&#x27;s Dex here. Motorola should really invest into promoting that more, but I&#x27;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.

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.

My last experience with them was with the Original first gen moto G. which was a brilliant phone. But of course it&#x27;s been a while.

I still have 2 Motorola phones here. One &gt; 12y old and one even older. The &gt; 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.

You&#x27;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.

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&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;s hope they make it work and keep it open. I&#x27;d buy another one especially if I could get a bamboo case.

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.

&gt; Motorola makes great hardware tooDo 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?

100% it&#x27;s OEM, every chinese phone is built by some &quot;you never heard about&quot; 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.

&gt; Motorola makes great hardware tooDo 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).

Yep, this is my biggest takeaway from this. I&#x27;ve been Graphene only since 2020 to the point where I&#x27;ve scarcely considered any hardware outside its support range (which has effectively meant I&#x27;ve only kept up with Pixels).

Looks like GrapheneOS was promised firmware access:&gt; Aside from that, we&#x27;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.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47217028">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=47217028</a>

What&#x27;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&#x27;s a completely different dynamic

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.

GrapheneOS is a non-profit and it&#x27;s not that kind of business partnership. We&#x27;re getting a device with official GrapheneOS support out of it and they&#x27;re getting increased device sales from having more secure devices with better updates and official GrapheneOS support. It&#x27;s not an exclusive partnership but we aren&#x27;t currently working with any other OEM and don&#x27;t have the resources to handle multiple for quite a while anyway. They&#x27;re going to get a lot out of being first.

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

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

&#x2F;me stops buying Samsung and waits for next Motorola Flip

It&#x27;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 &quot;is X using RCS?&quot; list on their servers, and every attempt to message someone checks that (with a local cache)... and like &gt;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&#x2F;MMS. Your app just isn&#x27;t recognizing them to display them nicely. Maybe try a different one?

&gt; I want group messages without having to install ...Well now I&#x27;m confused. I&#x27;ve always received SMS as fallback when my contacts add me to RCS group messages. But apparently this doesn&#x27;t always work according to people on the internet at large?Unfortunately most people still think they&#x27;re &quot;texting&quot; 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&#x27;s simultaneously misleading people, a DoS against non-BigTech clients, and monopolistic. The mobile ecosystem just keeps getting worse and there&#x27;s no sign of regulations fixing it any time soon.

afaik RCS does work but only with google services

Back in the days, I switched from Iphone 3G to Motorola Defy in order to benefit from more customisation. I&#x27;m now back into Apple ecosystem since iPhone 6, actually on iPhone 13 but i&#x27;m very tempted by GrapheneOS. Going back to Motorola would please me, as I loved this little Defy. Do you think there&#x27;s any chance to have RCS messages without Google involved ? I want group messages without having to install Whatsapp and not all my contacts are on signal.

I am exited as well but the OS is only one part of the equation. If the firmware BLOBs don&#x27;t get updates we still have a problem. I really hope this cooperation means that Motorola commits to longer support for gOS devices.

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).

Update policy is one of the largest reason if not THE reason why I didn&#x27;t pick motorola phone. We had a last Motorola phone which we had to buy a new one solely because the last phone hadn&#x27;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.

Still a bold move considering the increased malware on android devices vs ios. My parents would have their banking information stolen within 6 months

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”.

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&#x27;s then when I went for Pixels.

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...

According to Reddit, that Thinkphone seems to be an exception to Motorola&#x27;s poor update reputation.

&gt; 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.

Two years? What has this world become... Come back in six years. :-D

&gt; 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?

That is not what I experience on ThinkPhone. I get monthly security updates for about two years now.Maybe it is an exception? I&#x27;m in EU if that matters.And Motorola is almost free of bloatware. It is practically a stock Android.

This was figured out a while ago based on the hints given.That said, I&#x27;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.

&gt; Will the sandboxed google play permit banking apps to work using TPM and secured credentials?Apps that don&#x27;t work don&#x27;t fail due to technical reasons but because upstream says so, i.e. Google Wallet. My banking app works just fine.&gt; I would expect whatever you initialised before grapheneOS is wiped before you can run the alternate OS.Yes.&gt; Is termux possible with a root&#x2F;sudo function?GOS doesn&#x27;t support root by itself since they deem it a security risk, but it&#x27;s possible.

I&#x27;m just really curious if this phone is going to pass Google&#x27;s conformance tests and whatnot.  I feel like some of that is incompatible with GrapheneOS&#x27;s security model, so I wonder what&#x27;s going to happen there.

I don&#x27;t think GrapheneOS team would partner with a vendor unless their security&#x2F;usability standards were met (considering how long it took since the initial announcement) so I&#x27;m expecting feature parity with Pixel variants.

And if a bank does this, tell them that they can do remote attestation for GrapheneOS phones as well:<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;attestation-compatibility-guide" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;attestation-compatibility-gu...</a>

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&#x27;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.

<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;attestation-compatibility-guide#apps-banning-grapheneos" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;articles&#x2F;attestation-compatibility-gu...</a>

&gt; Graphene IIRC keeps a compatibility list somewhere.This is the community-maintained banking app compatibility list: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;privsec.dev&#x2F;posts&#x2F;android&#x2F;banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;privsec.dev&#x2F;posts&#x2F;android&#x2F;banking-applications-compa...</a>

I think most banking apps already do work on GrapheneOS (not sure about TPM&#x2F;secured credentials though). Graphene IIRC keeps a compatibility list somewhere. Some don&#x27;t work, of course, but more do than I would have expected.For me, the big question is if Google Wallet &amp; its NFC payments will work. They don&#x27;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.

No, grapheneOS fails both DEVICE_INTEGRITY and STRONG_INTEGRITY checks.

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&#x2F;sudo function?

For context, I had the moto g5 plus&#x2F; maybe g5 phone. Those phones might be so old that the concept of ads didn&#x27;t come whereas every phone we bought after that did have ads&#x2F;came with prepackaged apps.So I may have had a rose tainted picture of Motorola and I didn&#x27;t know this, Let&#x27;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.

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&#x27;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.

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&#x27;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&#x2F;personal experience about software&#x2F;android version updates being quite an issue which isn&#x27;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.

I assumed it did something like that, but I honestly don&#x27;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&#x2F;mfg specific application which cannot be removed.

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&#x27;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.

Motorola if you&#x27;re reading this remove Glance from your Android 16 on lower end phones it breaks the phone. I&#x27;m sure you have some deal with them, but you have control over technical failures that render the device unable to function.

Isn&#x27;t this Lenovo, a different thing from Mororola Solutions?edit: yeah it&#x27;s a different Motorola. Unrelated companies in 2025. Android Motorola is owned by Lenovo, it&#x27;s a Chinese brand

Motorola Mobility vs Motorola Solutions. Different companies. Different owners. Different nationalities.

So they shaked hands with a long term NSA hardware contractor: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.motorolasolutions.com&#x2F;newsroom&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;national-security-agency-certifies-motorola-solutions-cryptr-2-broadband-ip.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.motorolasolutions.com&#x2F;newsroom&#x2F;press-releases&#x2F;na...</a>Fantastic. Very secure.

That regulation doesn&#x27;t apply to mobile devices at this point afaik.

Seeing how Motorola is trying to bypass the regulation for software updates, I don&#x27;t have any hopes. <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.androidauthority.com&#x2F;motorola-eu-software-updates-loophole-3636627&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.androidauthority.com&#x2F;motorola-eu-software-update...</a>

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&#x27;ll take you 1 minute (Fairphone) or several hours (every other vendor I&#x27;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&#x27;s about it

EU regulation on that should come into force in Feb 2027.

I&#x27;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&#x2F;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.

Many people will are reading this comment on completely Lenovo(Chinese)-owned Thinkpad laptop.
If you are worried about devices made in&#x2F;by Chinese then good luck. Personally i am now more worried about US corps feed my phone data to Palantir.

you know there is a meme in Chinese netizens that they call Lenovo the sweetheart of US empire (美帝良心), the same thing that the same SKU was sold in America that is either cheaper than the equivalent in China or not even listed for

So... Graphene on a completely Lenovo (Chinese)-owned Motorola Mobility saying they focus more on security than other EU&#x2F;US vendors. Bold strategy.

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.

Also requires a pretty new&#x2F;high-end CPU for MTE and a separate secure enclave.

That&#x27;s already required if you want to sell the device in the EU (or EEA?) at all. So far, Motorola hasn&#x27;t left the market with their low-end devices so I presume they intend to deliver on the updates

Why? Some cheap smartphones are really powerful enough, the Software is bloated enough to feel sluggish

I guess it&#x27;s rathet hard to satisfy GrapheneOS requirements in 200 bucks budget. Things like at least 5 years of updates.

Perhaps €200 is too low as price, but I don&#x27;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&#x27;t

Yes, please. It&#x27;s a shame that privacy as a feature so often comes with a hefty price tag.

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

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

Yup, I&#x27;m one of those. I&#x27;m not paying 700 for a phone I rarely use anyway.

I&#x27;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.

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.

There are ones:
- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lineageos.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;lineageos.org&#x2F;</a>
- <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;grapheneos.org&#x2F;</a>

Motorola might be able to help here since they would be signing for their own hardware?

Here it&#x27;s Google not wanting to certify GrapheneOS I think, despite their valuable contributions to the AOSP.

Google Pay only works on device&#x2F;OS combos that have the specific blessing from Google. Only google can make it work.

Wireless payments skipping Google Wallet work just fine on GOS.

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.

GrapheneOS doesn&#x27;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.

well the thing is, i don&#x27;t do anything illegal, i don&#x27;t have much to hide and even if the police asked me to unlock my phone, i&#x27;d do it !What i don&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;d happily take ! But grapheneos doesn&#x27;t give me that choice...

I&#x27;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?

In Germany, Paypal uses NFC payments. It works on GrapheneOS

I have NFC payments on GrapheneOS.The problem isn&#x27;t the OS, it&#x27;s the payment providers not providing support.

Hopefully wireless payment do work on these, and they have face unlock working. That&#x27;s really the 2 issues I have with grapheneos.I know it&#x27;s supposed to be for privacy nerd, and they will tell you you shouldn&#x27;t use Google pay because it&#x27;s bad for privacy and so on... But it&#x27;s not the majority of people, most are willing to trade some privacy for convenience.

The misspelling of &quot;GrapehenOS&quot; in the tags below the article does not bode well for Motorola... :)

Motorola Signature (2026) and Motorola Razr Fold (2026) are ranked one above the Pixel 10 Pro XL on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dxomark.com&#x2F;smartphones&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dxomark.com&#x2F;smartphones&#x2F;</a>. It&#x27;s 2027 and later devices which are relevant though.

Pixel cameras are not about hardware, though, it&#x27;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.

Made by China is a whole lot different than designed&#x2F;compiled by China.Although iPhones are made by China, Apple is the one designing, quality-controlling and actually selling the device.

&gt; 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&#x27;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&#x27;t going to work the same way supporting Pixels does.&gt; 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 camerasMotorola Signature (2026) and Motorola Razr Fold (2026) are ranked one above the Pixel 10 Pro XL on <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dxomark.com&#x2F;smartphones&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dxomark.com&#x2F;smartphones&#x2F;</a>. It&#x27;s 2027 and later devices which are relevant though.&gt; btw. yes, it looks like vanilla Android, though it is not, my mother bought it after mine recommendation (previously used Xiaomi phones) and can&#x27;t say the ROM would be particularly goodThere&#x27;s no Android OEM shipping vanilla Android. Each one has their own forks of it. Vanilla Android doesn&#x27;t include Google Mobile Services.The stock OS is an entirely separate thing from GrapheneOS. Unlike Pixels, we won&#x27;t need to use the stock OS to obtain firmware and other non-kernel device support code which isn&#x27;t included in AOSP.

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 camerasbtw. yes, it looks like vanilla Android, though it is not, my mother bought it after mine recommendation (previously used Xiaomi phones) and can&#x27;t say the ROM would be particularly good

That&#x27;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.

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.

Oh thanks, that one I didn&#x27;t know, I&#x27;ll have a look at it.It seems to be European too which is another big plus.

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.

Curve works on GrapheneOS. I use it weekly.

Mobile payments used to work without any interference from Google through a bank&#x27;s own implementation of the wireless payment protocols. On iPhone you got stuck with Apple&#x27;s system (they restricted their NFC stack so competitors couldn&#x27;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.

&gt; I don&#x27;t want Google monitoring my paymentsIf you don&#x27;t want Google monitoring your payment you shouldn&#x27;t use mobile payments. In fact you shouldn&#x27;t even use cards, because those likely have agreements with Google for data sharing. If you&#x27;re serious, it&#x27;s simple, just use cash.

PayPal&#x27;s tap-to-pay also works without Google Wallet (and therefore on GrapheneOS).
It isn&#x27;t any more open than Samsung Pay though.

Motorola phones are Chinese, aren&#x27;t they? They mention being a Lenovo company in the article.

If Samsung gets support for Graphene I would be a happy man.

If this partnership with motorolla becomes a success, samsung will follow as will the chinese.

But can you pay over NFC without having google play installed?

Not all banks like Open Bank. Works on GrapheneOS

Wero makes it worse not better.With wero you must have play integrity and you can&#x27;t even have developer mode turned on which is frankly ridiculous. I don&#x27;t know of a single app that requires that. Source: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.wero-wallet.eu&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;25599098295313-I-m-seeing-this-error-message-Your-device-does-not-meet-our-security-requirements" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;support.wero-wallet.eu&#x2F;hc&#x2F;en-us&#x2F;articles&#x2F;25599098295...</a>They had a great opportunity to make an ecosystem not dependent on google and apple and they utterly failed. You can&#x27;t even log into it on the web, you must use the app.

With the adoption of Wero that should stop being a problem. As long as your bank app works on GrapheneOS.

Curve Pay refused to give me an account on my Murena FP6 and no local bank offers contactless without google pay, so I&#x27;m stuck using a bank card like a caveman.

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.

If you&#x27;re in Europe you can use Curve Pay, PayPal and multiple banks which haven&#x27;t moved to Google Pay. Alternatively, pay in cash if you want privacy.

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.

Using your phone instead of a plastic card is that important to you, at the cost of your privacy?

Yup, tried Graphene but went back to Android because of NFC payments.

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.

If you don&#x27;t want your payments to be tracked you need to use cash or crypto. Otherwise, just use a credit card. I really don&#x27;t see how unlocking a phone is easier or more convenient than using a credit card.

Hmm the one thing I&#x27;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&#x27;ve all moved to Google wallet :( or Samsung pay.I don&#x27;t want Google monitoring my payments so I&#x27;m using Samsung now but I&#x27;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&#x27;t think Motorola has anything like that.

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&#x27;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.

Would be interesting indeed to hear what the implications of what you bring up are. Anyone knowing enough to speculate?

a hardware manufacturer that is forced to comply with both the American Security Chip Act and the American Cloud Actare google&#x27;s pixel phones not subject to that?

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?

I&#x27;m so happy about that - out of all the vendors possible. And congratulations to the future users of the OEM Motorola users - You&#x27;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)

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.

Wat would be the compelling argument for middle managers who only think of meeting financial targets?

Yep, first party open source and long support. If this existed, you&#x27;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.

It&#x27;s not too late, Samsung is one of the most closed Android OEMs and they&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x2F;Play Store?Google could refuse unless Motorola&#x2F;GrapheneOS enforce developers ID verification and effectively give Google unilateral control over what type of software is allowed to run on our devices.[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5google.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;02&#x2F;27&#x2F;samsung-galaxy-update-android-recovery-menu-removed&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;9to5google.com&#x2F;2026&#x2F;02&#x2F;27&#x2F;samsung-galaxy-update-andr...</a>

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?

Can I be devils advocate and say I think this is two years too late on Motorola&#x27;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.

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&#x27;t something GrapheneOS can do.Regulators &#x2F; legislators can force Google to let GrapheneOS pass the Play Integrity API checks and Google Pay will start working.

Consider contributing to the continued existence of cash by using it.

I&#x27;m just hoping they make figuring out contactless payments a priority.

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.<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;12&#x2F;lenovo_firmware_nasty&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;08&#x2F;12&#x2F;lenovo_firmware_nasty...</a>

Motorola devices are terrible due to Motorola&#x27;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.

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.

There are plenty of people looking to get out of the Google&#x2F;Apple sphere of influence. These are people that maybe aren&#x27;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&#x2F;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&#x2F;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 &quot;security reasons&quot;. That gives a de-facto oligarchy to Google and Apple. Breaking that open might require some arm twisting.

They do make one with a 4&quot; display!  I&#x27;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&#x27;ve been very happy with it.  It has a fully functional 4&quot; external display, and unfolds into a full-size smartphone&#x2F;phablet display for when you need it.  I use the little external display probably 80% of the time, but it&#x27;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&#x27;s actually really cool.

No one suggests that open and developers-friendly phones should be expensive.

Other than flip&#x2F;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.

I don&#x27;t know why you need to bring developing countries into the discussion. I&#x27;m quite sure average users from developed countries don&#x27;t care that either.

The market for programs like revanced is pretty big, that&#x27;s why Google is going to remove &quot;sideloading&quot;.  At which point there will be a large market for an open phone that allows the user to install what they want.

&gt; [..] 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&#x2F;not-samsung&#x2F;not-apple&#x2F;not-chinese is substantial and growing. Here in Europe I&#x27;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.

For consumers maybe, for countries on the other hand there&#x27;s a massive push for digital independence right now and this is part of it.

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 &quot;cheaper is much more expensive in the long run&quot; to &quot;cheaper is a bit more expensive on the long run&quot;.This, of course, will not create enough value for the people who doesn&#x27;t need or appreciate the need for these $200 phones.

&gt; [..] Phones that are like $150-200 sell like hot cakesWhat percentage of that is based on phones at that price having a headphone jack?

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.

&gt; Does it last more than 2 years?I originally didn&#x27;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&#x27;re on my shit list now.

&gt;&gt; Make MDM easy &amp; 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&#x27;re competing with an open device strategy.Corporations want corporate devices that (a) are secure, (b) work, and (c) take as little of IT&#x27;s time as possible to manage.Motorola + GrapheneOS + Microsoft for a turnkey managed corporate device solution seems surprisingly competitive.

This would be big for businesses, like the the full title of the article reveals:&quot;Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS Foundation, marking a new chapter in smartphone security and expanding its enterprise portfolio&quot;I know a lot of businesses that would love to not be exposed to Google.

&gt; The average consumer doesn&#x27;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.

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.

It&#x27;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.

It is funny how I do believe this is true, but also can&#x27;t help but notice how much effort they spend defeating this exact user base. Reminds me of ad companies... I&#x27;m sure they also don&#x27;t care about targeting some fraction of a percentage of their base, but look how much effort they spend defeating ad blockers lol.

I know a fair number of non-technical folks that hate the idea of trusting Google or Apple with their data. It&#x27;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

The original Google Nexus program showed that there is a market for more open phones and platforms.I don&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x27;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.

But this seems like it&#x27;s mostly for corporations and businesses that they&#x27;re doing this feature. It&#x27;s the same as Lenovo Thinkpads which also have good Linux integration,and are catered to business. So if they&#x27;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&#x27;s a win-win for everyone

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.

You have a point, but two counters to this:1) You don&#x27;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&#x27;t mean there is no market for it. There&#x27;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.

It&#x27;s developer fantasy because no one was putting any money into this kind of project. Presumably, because the data showed there wouldn&#x27;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&#x27;s not a guarantee of success or anything, but a lot of stuff works like this. Mozilla didn&#x27;t gain market dominance (for a hot second in the early 2000&#x27;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&#x27;t ignore that, so non-devs always dealt with non-microsoft browsers whenever the devs came around. That kind of &quot;grass is greener&quot; non-marketing is a real winner when the product is solid.So here&#x27;s hoping Motorola takes a great idea and builds a product so solid on it that people can&#x27;t ignore it.

I actually think things have changed slightly. With the sudden shift to political extremism of the US government there&#x27;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&#x2F;Lenovo.Now I don&#x27;t know how big the public market is. And you&#x27;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.&quot;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&#x27;s code from source to be sure?&quot;

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 &quot;the leader&quot; of the third world, computers here won over consoles only because we could pirate expensive games that we couldn&#x27;t afford. Expensive cartridge vs two tape recorders and some fiddling with the tapes? The tapes win!

The market is huge enough to including all kinds of consumers

&gt; countries around Asia and you&#x27;ll be surprised how people prioritise featuresWhile 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.

The average consumer doesn&#x27;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.

you don&#x27;t need to convince the average user, you just need to convince the tech-influencers.

&gt; What developers want and what the average consumer wants&#x2F;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&#x27;t hold vibe coding in any high regard, I hate not knowing and controlling what code is running on my computer&#x2F;device, but I can see the value for amateurs in just playing around and occasionally destroying the OS, installing it again and so on.

The average consumer WILL like an OS that isnt overly cluttered and simpler and cleaner.

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

The article specifically talks about B2B and MDM-like features. The &quot;average consumer&quot; isn&#x27;t the point here -- rather, governments, defense, high-security corporations, etc.

&gt; This is just developer fantasy. The average consumer doesn&#x27;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.

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.

To add to this, midrange phones and laptops are now more than &quot;good enough&quot;. 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.

&gt; user control and freedomYeah, most people don&#x27;t want that. Wasn&#x27;t that apple add with the hammer all about freedom?

Developer fantasy? Here&#x27;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&#x27;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.

This is just a pessimist&#x27;s fantasy. The average consumer doesn&#x27;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&#x27;ll be surprised how many people are sideloading apps, which is part of the reason Google tried their bullshit with developing countries first.You&#x27;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 &quot;2 years&quot; 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&#x27;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&#x27;s nothing they can do about it. Don&#x27;t confuse exhaustion with apathy. They look similar, but are very different.

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&#x27;t have the custom silicon capability that Apple does.

The average consumer may not care but there&#x27;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&#x27;s not a custom ROM but just a stock device with official manufacturer support.- privacy&#x2F;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&#x27;t the largest market ever but it&#x27;s a sizeable and fairly loyal market because each one of these groups is fairly opposed to unnecessary change. It&#x27;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.

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&#x2F;custom ROM - &quot;bringing iOS like polish to Android&quot; 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 &quot;it doesn&#x27;t have all those ads like redmi at the same price&quot;

This is just developer fantasy. The average consumer doesn&#x27;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&#x27;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&#x2F;needs are two different things. Eg. Framework laptops. Macbook Pro vs Air.

If anyone from Motorola reads this thread; the market is beyond ripe for a good shake up. Going full open source and pushing updates &amp; openness, user control and freedom, you will gobble up a good chunk of market share. Make MDM easy &amp; first class (no third parties...), and a ton of corp will roll it out too. We need you more than you think.