Hmmm this would have sounded interesting if it didn’t require releasing new phones. I don’t think Motorola is going to release their next phone within a $200-$300 price range. As it stands, this is marginally better than yet another “ponzi your VS funding on the privacy community” scheme.
What would be useful, if they now have a partnership going, would be to convince Motorola to release the relock keys / firmware fixes for the bootloaders of some models that are no longer in production but are affordable and useful in the secondhand market. In particular, models that see good support from eg.: Lineage. Much easier to start a road towards better privacy and freer systems if it’s feasible on hardware you already have, after all.
So hyped about this! Any Motorola phones that have removable batteries?
FUCK YEAH! LETS GOOO!
My moto g85 doesn’t have any custom roms yet. I just tried on Lineage OS old 8.1.0 rom for my moto Z and now I desperately want to do the same on my current phone. Lineage is what I hoped for but now Graphene? FUCK YEAH!
Moto g15 (2025) has a headphone jack. I don’t know why their phones aren’t more popular.
Popular with me, except you can’t flash Lineage usually. But for the price they are great.
Shareholders are involved. This will be ruined. If you want me off apple, you need to oof get a mainline Linux phone. Until then, it’s all lies and misdirection.
Hell yes! Best smartphone I have had is my current Motorola, and it was surprisingly cheap too. Would love to put Graphene on it.
Truth be told I was hoping for Sony because I really like their high end phones from a hard ware point of view.
This better be flagship level specs.
If they continue to support Pixel phones that covers the flagship end pretty well. Extending to cheaper devices might be more worthwhile to get more people using GrapheneOS.
If they’ve got a model with a stylus then I’m sold.
Honestly this is the most interesting thing in the world of mobile for me since I initially heard about GrapheneOS looking to branch out to another OEM as an option.
Assuming it is in fact a Motorola phone, it would have to be a big piece of shit or unbelievably expensive for what it is before I wouldn’t be very tempted by it.
If it was literally a Moto G Power 2025/2026 with GrapheneOS out of the box for $300-$800 I would probably be on board. Supporting something not Google Play or Apple bound is important enough to me that I will pay some level of a premium price for it to support the mission behind it, like I do with System76.
Honestly thought they’d partner up with fairphone since both companies share a similar view in longevity for the end user. Hope Motorola does the same
Fairphone has a partnership with Murena to ship a variant of the Gen 6 with e/OS/, don’t they?
GrapheneOS devs have been very clear about Fairphone not caring the slightest about security. They are the last OEM in the world they’d choose.
Can we get a grapheneOS lite for fairphone? I care about sideloading apps and removing gapps, not about state actors
In the absence of GrapheneOS, you could just flash LineageOS without GApps, right?
As an iPhone user from the 3G days, this is legitimately interesting to me. I love the form factor of the modern Razr flip-phones, and having access to a privacy-focused OS like Graphene might just tip me over the edge.
Anyone with first-hand experience, how’s Graphene OS with banking apps?
Use your bank’s web portal. If your bank doesn’t let you use a web portal, switch fucking banks, because that means they don’t care about you.
Bank apps are filled with all kinds of tracking spyware.
My bank’s app won’t run on my Pixel 8 Pro with GrapheneOS. Most apps run fine. It’s pretty much just the bank app and eBay that refuse to run.
My bank has a website. Nothing needs to be an app. Fuck apps with a rake.
The only trouble with the website (my bank’s website at least) is that you have to input a passcode, then a secret password, THEN it’ll send a 2FA SMS for me to put in a third code. Yay for security, but I’d love to be able to login with my thumbprint.
Passkeys. Done.
Oh damn, why doesn’t eBay work? It’s not a deal-breaker, but it is an app I use with some regularity.
It annoyed me at first but it really doesn’t matter because the eBay website works fine. It’s just some companies choosing to use Google’s API to check OS integrity. It’s supposed to be a security check to make sure core components haven’t been hacked, but of course Google makes their API returns a “no” if your version of Android doesn’t let them run all their spyware.
Anyone with first-hand experience, how’s Graphene OS with banking apps?
Depends on the bank. Chase didn’t work, but bank of america did.
I haven’t had any trouble with banking apps. One gives me a warning but allows me to continue. Google Wallet doesn’t work for payments but that is just fine with me.
Is that the equivalent of Apple Pay? That’s pretty ubiquitous here in Australia.
Yeah same data harvesting in the name of convenience
It runs fine on my Pixel 7a, I have an account with 2 Brazilian banks and they all work well.
Some apps just don’t work though, but they are far and between, an example is Brazil’s gov.br, which is a website that is used for ID confirmation on everything that pertains to the government (tax revenue, your own business details,etc.). But then an old phone does that job for me at home.
Speaking of Brazil, it is worth mentioning that Google Pixels are not officially sold here. The ones I did obtain I bought on a “Brazilian eBay” and there is no e-SIM support for it nor any warranty services. I had to do the battery replacement myself despite knowing that Google was offering to fix faulty Pixel 7a’s on NA/India/Europe/etc. I am only bringing this up because, coincidentally, 50% of Motorola’s smartphone sales are on LATAM. It’s a pretty smart move they are making if you ask me, they are aware they could explore this huge market it seems.
what is this brazillian ebay? I am struggling to find good ecommerce stores here in latam
oh I apologize, I should have just used it’s correct name: Mercado Livre/Libre. It’s pretty huge here.
And not just in Brazil! I think Perú and Chile are also big on MercadoLibre.
Banking and finance is the one area where Graphene falls over for me in the UK, on a Pixel 9.
In short, my bank’s app - Lloyds - doesn’t work on Graphene. At all. I have Play Services sandboxed, and I’ve tried all the tricks, but nope. No dice. The website works in the browser just fine, but is kind of a pain in the arse to have to manually log in to whenever I want to use it.
And, as with all Graphene phones regardless of bank, Wallet does not allow registration of any payment cards. Neither my credit nor debit cards work. Store reward cards do though, so that’s something.
Workarounds for me are currently:
- a Monzo card registered with my Garmin watch,
- my bank card saved in the Lidl app, which can be used for payments
- a magsafe wallet that holds my debit card
I’m led to believe that the Curve app can be used for contactless payments, however, I somehow failed the ID check when I tried to register with them, and their customer service is APPALLING. It’s been five months, and I’m still no closer to actually getting hold of anyone who might be able to help. Also, Curve was recently bought by Lloyds, so it seems likely that that option will be closed in the foreseeable future.
Ultimately though, it’s fine, and the benefits outweigh those few drawbacks.
might be useful for moto g type budget phones.
I highly doubt it will come in budget phones which are usually subsidized by preloaded apps.
Oh hell yeah! Last two unlocked phones I’ve bought have been motos! I’m very excited to see what this brings!
My favorite phones were the original Motorola Droids…member the charging dock that looked like an alarm clock?
lenovo doesnt strike me as a privacy lover and avid kernel updater.
Motorola is a major supplier of communication equipment for the IDF and produces bomb fuses used in IDF’s bombs. It also donated money to Project 2025.
I don’t know, I expect them to call it the (We’re clear on) OPSEC 1
Yeah, i expected lemmy to be more informed about it but kinda surprising how many people don’t know about it.
I look forward to using GrapheneOS on a phone with a MicroSD slot. Google and Apple (as examples) are always incorrect in their assumptions that “this amount of built-in storage is all you will ever need.”
It’ll never be all I need because I want to be able to remove my data from a dead or broken phone. Microsd or NVMe are the only things I know that could provide that.
No, they intentionally limit storage so they can sell cloud solutions and suck up more of your fungible personal data while you pay them.
