Discussion
Motorola has announced their new high end flagship phone including upcoming official support for GrapheneOS as an OS option.
Motorola Signature 27 will be the first Motorola device supported by GrapheneOS. More devices will be supported in the future.
@GrapheneOS
Quite a good news we don't need to buy Google phone to deGoogle!
But sadly, Motorola has been acquired by Lenovo, a Chinese company
@GrapheneOS lol, $1600 and filled with genAI malware. No thanks. I need a $300 noAI phone. Will check back later.
@yashpheh Motorola has their own OS with Google Mobile Services and Gemini. That has nothing to do with GrapheneOS and isn't what's on the device when using GrapheneOS.
There will be more devices from Motorola with official GrapheneOS support.
The current budget option is to buy a used Pixel 8a to get a device with over 4.5 years of support remaining with all the expected security features. Those are often available for $200 in countries where they were sold officially.
@GrapheneOS
That sounds terrific, but if they really wanted market penetration they would go for the Moto G line. Most people can afford those.
@bardmoss Those devices aren't yet close to meeting the requirements for updates and security features. There will be more supported devices at cheaper price points but it has to start from the top down due to those requirements.
@GrapheneOS
Do know how that sounds, right? Rich people get security first. Maybe it's because they're paying you more.
@bardmoss @GrapheneOS If you wanna complain about this, ask Qualcomm to bring the improvements they made to the latest Snapdragon Elite to their lower-end chips because that's really where the price comes from.
@bardmoss GrapheneOS is available for free and isn't receiving any funding from Motorola.
Pixel 8a meets all of our requirements, is one of the recommended devices on our site and has over 4.5 years of the 7 years of support remaining. They're available for $200 used. It's pretty hard for any OEM not making their SoC to compete with that. An SoC with similar updates and security features costs at least around $200 alone and RAM/SSD prices are super inflated due to a supply crisis for both.
@GrapheneOS Could you give me some of your insight into why mobile devices only get like 7 years of support for their hardware, compared to PCs, which usually go supported for 10+ years? Is the hardware really being innovated at such a rapid pace that we would expect the architecture 7 years later to be so different as to require double the amount of work to maintain, or is it mostly artificially created obsolescence by the hardware manufacturers to sell more chips?
@GrapheneOS
And it won't be affordable until it has been replaced by the *new* flagship model. But that's the nature of "flagship" models... Nice try, Motorola, but not in my budget!
@GrapheneOS Sadly not a whole lot of information in the link on the things that would make or break it for me, particularly since it'd be a phone that cost more than my main PC when I bought it. I recognise my needs in a phone are in the minority, so don't take this as me disparaging your collaboration with Motorola. My greatest concern has less to do with this device itself and more what beyond my own selfish desires appears like it could lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy where this is the last time Motorola collaborates with you.
I worry at a price of $1,600USD, the already small market for this device is going to lead to even smaller returns for the purchases with Graphene out of the gate. Most if the people I know who can drop that kind of money on a phone don't care about security, privacy, whether the OS is proprietary or open source. I fear the ones that do will expect this device to be perfect for each of their individual needs for what they're paying for it.
@disorderlyf GrapheneOS usage will be evaluated based on update downloads rather than how many phones are sold with it since most people will likely install it themselves. It doesn't particularly matter whether the device itself sells a lot since what they'll be interested in is the percentage of people using GrapheneOS on it. If it's a high percentage of people using GrapheneOS then that will make them a lot more interested.
There will be cheaper devices supported once those have MTE.
@GrapheneOS The fact that they are not evaluating performance based on sales is definitely reassuring. I await MTE support on more devices and will pass along the information if someone I know is in the market for a phone with that kind of budget.
$1500 AUD that's out of reach of just about everyone except the wealthy.
@thesoundoftruth That's not about GrapheneOS but rather the regular Motorola OS with Google Mobile Services. GrapheneOS doesn't have any agentic AI included. People can install apps for that if they want it.
We have no plan to provide any of our own agentic AI features. We think it belongs in apps installed by users rather than the OS. We do want hardware acceleration to work to encourage avoiding privacy invasive cloud AI services but it's a mobile phone, not a huge server with 1TB of VRAM.
@ratcatcher @tarajdactyl Most banking apps already work on GrapheneOS. See https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compatibility-with-grapheneos/.
@GrapheneOS The price and "next-generation agentic AI" would kill it for me.
@MyricaGale There will be more supported devices at lower price points once those meet our requirements. Snapdragon currently only provides SoC for the flagship SoC.
Most of what's in the post is about the standard Motorola OS with Google Mobile Services and has nothing to do with GrapheneOS. There's not going to be any cloud AI included in GrapheneOS. People can use apps for that if they want it and we aren't going to provide it ourselves.
The post has a specific section about GrapheneOS.
@GrapheneOS Someone asked if you get a cut of the phone price. I'm interested to know as well as that does help justify the price for me. There is something to be said about leaving the house in 2026, in Airplane mode with my tunes going, hopping in the car, bluetoothing my tunes over, cruising wherever with offline GPS and literally not even realizing I'm still disconnected.
Graphene, and self-hosting in general, feels so amazing, like the cord has been cut. Love ya, Graphene Team!
@GrapheneOS Thanks for the info. Will GrapheneOS be installed? Or does one have to install it?
@GrapheneOS I hope this will be available in the US too and not get squashed by the big telcos like they have done in the past.
@GrapheneOS Congratulations 🎉
@GrapheneOS if you have connections, the Milestone 2 is worth a revival, just some better hardware here and there and pre-installed GraoheneOS, of course 😃
@GrapheneOS I hope one of their budget options will also get the support, I dislike flagship models.
The had a nice "power" version some phones back, with the only trait of having a big Batterie, everything else was just subpar.
That was great for me!