Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

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

This 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Makes sense the thinkpad of phones would be the partner for this

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/phones/motorola-smartphones/t...

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.

This is amazing!! Hope this will make getting a GrapheneOS phone much easier! Motorola phones are easier to find here than Pixels.

Could this be a road to getting GrapheneOS approved under Play Integrity (for contactless payments, etc)?

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?

"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?

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... :)

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.

Great. Please make a Graphene OS phone with a physical camera/mic/gyro killswitch. Thank you!

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)

Give me a graphene os phone moto, my money will be yours.

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.

Hell yeah! I was really hoping they were teaming up with Motorola when they teased about this earlier!

Love my g54.

How about replaceable batteries?

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

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.

.gov would love a graphene-native phone if manufactured in the U.S. or by an American company

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.

Motorola is back

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.

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)

I can only dream for a new special edition of the Motorola Flipout with GraphenOS included !

Finally, seems like a real possibility of ditching my Apple device (never used Android because of Google)

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.

Maybe we'll get Graphene on US market phones that Lineage won't target.

I hope that in they choose the same camera sensors pixels use. Hard to beat the processing gcam can do.

I was so much hoping it was Fairphone.

the best and most beautiful smartphone i ever owned was the motorola razr i.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_RAZR_i

it had a 4.3" display ... i think i'm coming

Alas that in the US it is seemingly impossible to get unlocked bootloaders now. I'm trying to figure out what couple-year-old international phone to buy now.

Good on Motorola. Incredibly smart to tap these passionate geniuses.

Is this going to be cheaper than Pixel?

Congrats to Daniel and the team.

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).

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

/me stops buying Samsung and waits for next Motorola Flip

unfortunately every single Motorola phone is ridiculously large

No handsets until at least 2027.

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.

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

The real thing they need to be behind is getting app makers to ignore Google Play integrity

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?

Hau to hack

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."

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

Chinese GrapheneOS is coming

It's OnePlus all over again.

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?

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.

Nokia 1101 is safer than all smartphones, just saying.

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.

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

India news channel hack

Cool, now we need an Android fork.

Now do Samsung

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.

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Wait... so the supposedly most secure mobile OS will only be able to run on either a Google phone or a Chinese phone?

Yes, Motorola Phones is Chinese.

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,

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

Fantastic. Very secure.

can anyone please shed light on whether GrapheneOS has any ties to Israel, jewish founder, anything of the sort that you might know. I am interested in adopting this OS but I am weary of the above, so if you know, let me know please I am sure others would like to know as well. What makes me ask is the obvious star of david logo (which i know is the chemical symbol for graphene) but still weary. Thanks.