Having a vendor explicitly supporting it...epic is an understatement.

I had completely forgotten Lenovo bought Motorola from Google some 10 years ago. Honestly haven't seen a Motorola phone in at least that long ...

Motorola Mobility belongs to Chinese Lenovo but headquarters are in Chicago. Not sure if that makes it better or worse regarding privacy and surveillance compared to USA only.

Volla phone (has choice between ubuntu touch and android rom) seems pretty cool.

Thanks for the reality check. While this a good development, I share your concern and we should not stop,or even slow, developing any fully free as in freedom OS. I tried PostmarketOS on an old Oneplus 6T recently and I estimate we have one or two more phone replacement cycles until I think it'll be ready for me to switch.

Good. Now if only they could make the Edge+ with the same relative spec sheet and ditch the curved glass in 2027. I'd buy it in a heartbeat for Graphene. My next phone WAS going to be a Pixel for the broader case/screen protector support, but that would make me reconsider cause I would really miss the chop chop flashlight.

My last few phones have been Motorolas and I've been very very happy with them.

My only issue was that back then, I wasn't really paying attention to alternative OSs like Graphene, Lineage or e/os and was therefore not really too concerned with ROM support/chip set. When I switched over to e/os, two of my Motorola's (including the one I WANT to use with it) has no ROM support because it's running a Mediatek chipset. So I'm using my second to last one while my nice new one collects dust.

Moving forward I'll be paying more attention to Qualcomm vs Mediatek.

Me too. I've always bought Google Pixels but I don't want to give Google my money anymore.

So I'll probably buy a Motorola if this deal gets through.

i bought a mororolla 3 years ago and it still lasts 2 days on a charge. id say go for it.

I'd add "less than 15cm tall" too. I've had enough of stupid giant phones that don't fit in pockets and where you can't even reach the top or other side with your thumb.

I'd really like a removable battery as well.

SD slot would be great. Fuck every major company getting rid of it, so you have to use their cloud provider.

+1 for the headphone jack

Grapheneos is a pretty attractive selling point for a phone. They could even make money the old fashioned way: by selling phones.

Probably they will not support it for budget phones

Graphene might be marketed towards enterprises first. Look at that leaked slide again: it mentions "bloatware-free interface with Business Edition."

The bigger leak is Motorola acknowledging they ship bloatware, IMO

Easy. By not making it a budget phone.

Motorola doesn’t have to sell apps. Apps sell themselves. And an App Store that isn’t riddled with crap is appealing to everyone.

I mean, they could still include those on the base model of the phone, but just officially support flashing Graphene for those who want to do it. I am reasonably certain the target markets for pre-installed apps/ads and people who would be interested in flashing Graphene are completely separate groups. Kind of like how a stock Pixel is basically Google/Gemini Spyware, but Thayer doesn't matter to someone who buys one to install Graphene.

Fairphone isn’t available everywhere while Motorola is. It’s pretty easy to understand why they chose them.

Motorola gets a little bit of love from me because they were (maybe still are?) the only ones who allowed me to shout "COMRADE MOTO!" to wake my phone up

I will not say "Hey Google" in a million years. I refuse.

I think LG made the Nexus 5, though.

Actually LG made the Nexus 5, Moto did the Nexus 6, developed while Google owned Motorola and released a few weeks after Lenovo bought them.

Depending on your definition of 'small', your only hope might be if they did Razr and you used it folded up. That's credibly small, though I don't know if Graphene would be game for bothering to do that sort of multiple display work.

OEM, they can lock the bootloader. So at least there's that

That's the point, right? Google is trying to lock down Android even more, and third party vendors can see the increasing risk. If they fork now, they can maybe undercut the increasing monopoly efforts.

Just wanted to echo the vote with your wallet sentiment. It’s the only power we have!

I once bought a Motorola one phone because it would have quick and lengthy updates. Motorola certainly didn't provide that.
Other than that it was a decent phone.

I have used Motorola for the last 5 years or so. They had superior battery life compared to the others and were inexpensive. I bought my last one for like 40 bucks on clearance. I won't spend more than 100 bucks plus tax on a phone anymore. I use minimal apps, don't take lots of pictures with it, mostly text and make phone calls on it. I don't keep social media apps on it nor restaurant apps. I mostly use the Maps, the Notes, and the browser applications. I don't like the android/google calendar interface but will use reminders/tasks. I also use book/reading/podcast apps (Librivox, Podbean, Kindle, and another one...). I had overly invested in Kindle years ago unfortunately. I don't really watch video on the phone as it is too small, but have YT music on it. I could use advice for alternatives that are better.

I solely need camera, contactless payments and projection for cars. If it is capable of these I am pre ordering.

GrapheneOS was claiming 5-year support IIRC. Apple level support is infeasible. Not sure how affordable longer firmware support from Qualcomm is.

Thats the trick, when a company supports romming, you can extend the support for however long you want!

Why do you think they are $300-500? I don't care about "only" 3 years of updates if i don't have to spend $1300 on a friggin cellphone.

Reading the original press release might be a good Start

Their Thinkphones pretty much always had good update policy

Almost like you cant really sell a 100€ device and expect it to be optimised like a mid range

but saw that you were lucky to get 3 years of OS updates.

fucking great, less enshittification when they stop shoving the updates down your throat.

Fully agree on that. Always better to start fully fresh, even without such problems.

That said, it's still important that it will ship pre-installed. That way app-developers who block GrapheneOS cannot excuse their actions anymore by saying that it was your decision to use another OS, and therefore not their problem.

I'll second this, me and the wife keep breaking or losing phones and have gone for cheap motorolas as replacements. Doesn't have much bloatware, and can be easily purged.

EDIT : If you hate the amount of bloatware, it does have, compare it to the samsung galaxy amounts of bloat.

Moto X4 was an amazing phone, I hope they bring back smaller phones, I don’t want to use a tablet.

I also had the Moto X and loved it. The wood back was neat. After then I kept getting bigger phones, from LG and Samsung, but nowadays I kind of miss smaller phones. I was also sold on the better cameras of these other brands. Depending what they release I might make my way back to Motorola. I'm pretty ingrained in Samsung at the moment.

Hello Moto!

SailfishOS runs in Jolla phones (linux) and PostmarketOS is doing strides.

It's not just degoogling is the reason for using grapheneos. There are many other user friendly controls. For instance, you block apps from network use, so your click farming game doesn't track everything about you.

Nice try officer.

This is nonsense. Everyone needs the most secure phone possible, especially considering it's the only device some people will ever own. None of the other de-Googled offerings come close to the security features that Graphene offers, some of which are custom built solutions. They go above and beyond what the typical ROM does, which is why it even supports a lot of banking apps that would normally be blocked.

There's a good reason people talk about GrapheneOS a lot lately, and not any of the many alternative Android ROMs that exist.

Also, let’s keep in mind that GrapheneOS only supports Pixel because they don’t want to allow people to run their OS on hardware they don’t think is secure enough

Obviously. That's the point: Graphene isn't just any de-Googled ROM, it's specifically a product designed for security-conscious users. If someone doesn't care about security and just wants to dick around on an old Android device, they can use one of the many toy ROMs out there (like iodé)

The main goal of Graphene OS is to protect users from some very specific attacks like some devices police uses to unlock phones or some targeted hacks by state actors.

That's simply not true. It does do those things, but that's not "the main goal". Not sure where you got that from?

Galaxy S3 was peak phone, removable battery and built in IR blaster. It only went downhill from there.

they shoot themselves in the foot by increasing prices. After owning multiple OP phones (last one was an 8T ) I got a realme GT 7 pro, way cheaper than OP and it's of same hardware quality and software

Could force them to use Signal perhaps

Dream on...
Motorola has continuously been moving headphone jack down to ever lower spec devices.
Has been the reason I bought a used G84 half a year ago, as this has been the last Motorola with at least somewhat decent specs to support those. (On top of it, it runs LineageOS really well!).
But the GrapheneOS phone will be a high-end-device, so you can probably forget about it...

Motorola Mobility was spun off from Motorola in 2012 and sold to Google. Then Google sold it in 2014 to Lenovo, the Chinese company that had also previously bought IBM's entire personal computer business.

Original Motorola, renamed Motorola Solutions, retained the rights to the Motorola name in everything except cell phones, and continued to manufacture radio and communications equipment and other signal processing equipment (including stuff like cable TV boxes). They remain a major contractor for militaries, law enforcement, and fire/EMS emergency responders.

If we're talking about Motorola cell phones, we're talking about the Chinese owned company, not the American owned company.

That's another Motorola. The one making phones is Lenovo who bought the brand to put it on phones.

do you mean Motorola Solutions or Motorola Mobility(the one Lenovo currently owns)?

The good one is the one shipping Google spyware and not updating their devices.

The funny part is that's actually the least bad thing they've done.

it's cheap. mine was like $200 new. can recommend.

"Embrace, Extend, Extinguish". When have they ever done otherwise.

Don't be too hard on yourself, they definitely put money and effort into influencing opinions in all the subversive ways they can manage. But also, let this be a lesson to always check alternatives and their reason for existing. I consider it part of best practices.

Lenovo/Moto is weird about that... The android phones and android tablets have next to nothing to do with each other.

I do have a couple of their tablets and like them well enough, but you might as well consider them an entirely different vendor versus the Moto phone part of the business.

You need one of these!

This is actually supported by GrapheneOS currently, if you need that extra push. 😉

If it wasn't because of this

As it stands today, GrapheneOS is exclusively available on Google Pixel devices. Whatever device Motorola is building with GrapheneOS, it’s beyond even the Motorola Signature’s specs, which is currently the “flagship” in Motorola’s lineup, as even that doesn’t meet the needed requirements.

I thought first maybe one year, but that statement made me very sceptical if that is possible.

When the phone comes out lol /joking

Fr tho i think they reveal new phones every April? So if not April this year then April of next year.

Just bought a Motorola because it was the best price of the 3 phones I found that had most of the features I wanted. This makes me feel better about that purchase. I'm also pretty happy with the phone so far.

Had that on my Moto G Plus 5G (which is a shit name btw), as well as twisty-wrist for camera.

Two entirely different philosophies. Depends on what is most important to you.

Fairphone focuses on sustainability and modularity, with degoogled OS options.

Graphene focuses on security and privacy. Degoogled out of the box.

Motorola is based in a freedom respecting country not the EU so certainly they won't get compromised by the hardware.

No no lol smaller dammit

if all goes to plan this would provide them more access to patches and other info

Quit fear mongering

And who do you want them to partner with exactly?

The only "good" one is Fair Phone and Graphene has already spoken about their lax approach to security.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44361352

Who? Grapahen OS? The same way they do now I guess. Nothing changes for the OS. It's the hardware that needs to fulfill some extra requirements for Graphene OS team to support it.

matured to the point that we don't need to rely on for-profit monoliths any more

Which phones are we using for Graphene OS at the moment? Ah, yeah… Google… well known for its non-profit behaviour… I say: Give me alternatives which we aren't to try to get rid of in the first place.

How would Motorola lock it down? They don't control it in any way.

Jesus dude let them get compatibility before you bring out the assumptions.

fair phone lacks the hardware security to run fully featured grapheneOS. Other than that it does work on fairphone.

It is owned by Lenovo, make of that what you will.

Google is also basically American. Make of that what you will.

So what if it is? Replace the stock OS with GrapheneOS and it doesn't matter who manufactures the phone.

Better than the alternatives at this rate, unless there is an EU alternative.

Just because criminals value their privacy doesn't mean that everyone that values their privacy is a criminal.

Today's peaceful protester is tomorrow's criminal.

(Because even peaceful protests will become outlawed)