I love graphene, but I hope they’re planning to also roll out some very strong stock software - or else this will make for a very rough first impression on a large audience of normies and hurt graphene’s long run chance of success. The camera, gallery, and app store in particular will not come up to many users’ standards.
My impression from the article is that the Motorola phones ship with default Android, but flashing to GrapheneOS is officially supported. So it would only be people who would be flashing GrapheneOS anyway.
Yeah by “switch to” they probably do mean flash. I could have sworn they had plans to ship Graphene phones but maybe that’s a later phase.
I could have sworn they had plans to ship Graphene phones
They do. They say it in their roadmap:
Hardware and firmware security are core parts of the project, but it’s currently limited to research and submitting suggestions and bug reports upstream. In the long term, the project will need to move into the hardware space.
Would you trust a pre-flashed phone though?
I guess with GOS they have integrity checkers.
At least for right now I would trust one that had the backing of the Graphene devs. Them and Signal are probably the two most rock solid trust sources right now. (Of course this must constantly be reevaluated)
There are some third party vendors online that ship pre-flashed GrapheneOS phones iirc, but I don’t believe there has ever been on with it factory installed.
I would never trust a pre flashed Graphene phone. Always flash yourself for security.
I agree, you should always flash it yourself. Though GrapheneOS does have the Auditor app to attest the integrity of the operating system against another GrapheneOS device. It’s always going to be best practice to do it yourself, however.
There are some really talented people working on the camera systems for Apple and Google etc. what I don’t get is surely there are some equally talented engineers (in image processing) who love open source so why aren’t they working on an open source camera platform?
It seems an itch that’s not getting scratched.
idk if this is the case here but on a firmware level, interfacing with these camera chips almost always requires an NDA that they’ll only sign with very large minimum orders
This is also why open source wearables can’t have the best PPG heart rate/SPO2 tracking.
There are only about 4 PPG analog front ends still in production that don’t require an NDA and the Max86141 is the only one worth anything it seems.
You can’t do analog front ends with any small FPGAs that I know of and it is simply to large to do it (well, at least) on a small wearable with discrete components.
I guess aosp needs more open source love what with Google treating it like a bastard step child
Motorola should be able to lead them into the right direction for this. Moto controls their own drivers and while i don’t know, i don’t expect they’re using stock android camera, they can probably just provide the camera app to graphene
They need to support it on the Moto G phones so people can actually afford them.
What are the odds that it filters down?
I’ll pick up a cheap android and put Lineage on it before I buy another flagship phone.
Not for awhile as the cheaper chips don’t have the features required.
What are those features? I thought avoiding Google stack would be entirely software based. Send me a link if you don’t want to write it all down.
GrapheneOS is not just about avoiding the google stack, but comprehensive security hardening intended to address a wide variety of threat models.
They are listed there: https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices
I got a deal on a new 9 from my carrier for $5 a month for 24 months.
$120 CAD.
But, in canada, the phones come carrier unlocked and had no issue flashing it. Though i only ever powered it on once before it was flashed - to turn on oem unlocking. The sim was not used until then. So it didn’t do any auto downloads that might have caused a problem.
Long short: you can find them cheap if you look.
What is your plan price though. I see lots of thee x a month for phone but they also have a really high base price.
In canada it’s all high. But i have 120GB data, unlimited calling and text in north America, free roaming, for 45$/mo
So my bill is 50 + tax.
I’ve had the phone for lver a year now.
Is this available for non-canadians? Sincerely An American who pays more then that for less.
I was looking at the lowest end pixel for Graphene (Pixel 7) and they are still nearly $400 on the aftermarket. It’s insane.
Where are you looking? I see Pixel 8s, used and unlocked, on ebay for $200-300.
Most of the Pixel 7s on Swappa are just under US$200 at this moment.
I got a 7 Pro around 6 months ago for $280 CAD. Surely there are other less expensive sources you could find.
Damn, the market’s crazy. You could get a Pixel 7 brand new, unlocked, for less than $400 when it was still current, 3 years ago.
The only things Pixels have going for them are the aggressive sales and GrapheneOS.
Anecdotally I bought a used pixel 9a last year for ~$350, could be regional or due to ongoing inflation though
I bought a new in box old stock Pixel 9a for $350 USD a couple months ago from eBay. This was just before that Cop City protestor gave a duress password to border patrol, I wonder if that caused a bit of a spike in demand for old Pixels?
I’m guessing inflation and the tech related bullshit. Everyone marking shit up.
Yeah the signature phones cost around $1.500 here in my country, my budget is $400 tops, no way I can afford that, my hopes are lost.
I’m still looking for a solution after https://keepandroidopen.org/
About 50% of my apps are from F-Droid (the others are specific local apps and especially bank apps, which is difficult …)
Will this affect graphene os?
if developers stop developing apps, that will affect GrapheneOS, yes
Oh yes, that makes sense.
I think apps will still be developed however they will reach only the custom ROM audience which I expect will grow massively.
I think the second part is correct, but the first one is not because lots of developers don’t use a custom ROM, and neither does a large part of their intended audience. Sadly, many people are not ready to give up the bank’s app, perhaps literally cannot give up the government app, but also hardware compatibility with most phones is not there, because of missing drivers.
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yeah i need my banking, only thing stopping me from using a non-googled phone. everything else can fuck off
my bank app works well within a containerized user with google play services installed
i dont think you need google play services for banking.
furthermore, i disabled play services. i dont need it for 99% of apps.
sometimes theres one cool heavily proprietary app that forces you to use it. sucks. and i just gotta uninstall it.yes you do. my bank doesnt work without google play services
ok. my mistake.
either way…
i would think you could just use a web browser. but sometimes app is more preferablethere is no web app anymore, all mobile
I’m pretty sure this is wrong. Like obviously it’s a bad thing that they are making it harder to distribute apps through 3rd parties but they aren’t stopping you from sideloading unsigned apps. They are introducing an additional step to unlock your phone to allow unsigned apps. Yes it is annoying and no I do not agree with what they are doing. But they are not removing unsigned app support from all android devices.
The new step will be deciding how long you wish to allow unsigned apps to be installable on your device (either 7 days or indefinitely) and then it requires you to wait 24 hours before you can start to install apps without Google developer signing.
These rules do suck, and it is a bad thing, but lying or exaggerating what is happening will not make them reverse course. It only justifies them when they say “it’s not that bad and it’s for your protection.”
I would agree, but that flow is through google play services not through the system itself, so google can just remove it whenever they want.
I’ll believe it when the roms hit xda.
Excited, sure, just hesitant. No buy until it’s truth.
Please Moto, make a not gigantic 6in slab of a phone. Please make one ~5in with good specs.
Yep. Sick of giant phones. Crazy hard to find a small phone with decent specs.
I want a new take on the Pixel 4a. Slim, light, reasonably rugged just by the nature that it’s plastic all around and weighs nothing. I miss that phone still…
Same! The only reason I moved to an 8 is bc the port ended up getting so worn it stopped charging and wireless charging took forever.
I don’t care that much about size. Not nearly as much as the “flagship” designation bullshit. How about we don’t have to pay 5x as much, because it’s a flagship and still let us have Graphene?
Most Motorola phones in the U.S. were cheaper, but post sanctions I’m not sure.
Wish I could get it without the free watch and earbuds and take those out of the price. "Free $299 value buying a $399 phone. Can I just buy the phone for $150 please lol.
Edit: (Apparently the developers are just supporting flagships for now, so the normal phones I guess won’t be supported)
Please ALSO make a giant 7" one, Moto. Thank you!
This isn’t a brick wall TV interview.
6 inches is gigantic?
That’s what I have and it doesn’t feel quite big enough. Close but not quite.
Never once thought it felt too big in my hand or my pocket…
Yes.
Your hands are large.
Maybe your hands are just smol
personally i think Moto G Power is gonna be a beast with GOS
Dual sim slots sd card headphone jack insane battery
AFAIK they’re only targeting their flagship models first. Guess we’ll see, but I don’t think the Moto G series will get it. At least not initially.
whistles
They make a $2,600 smartphone?
I’d bet that about half the price is just the RAM soldered onto the thing
It’s gonna be a premium for the folding feature or some other feature on that particular model — they list two other models that are considerably less expensive and have the same amount of RAM.
Can confirm recently got a box of 440 unsoldered Micron DDR5 memory ICs at work.
It was $140k. Not DIMMS but the chips soldered to the DIMM.
I think the foldables are all somewhere along those lines. New tech, and double the screen and such adds up.
Okay good, they clarified that they won’t ship with it. I’ve seen people saying they will but I never read anything from Graphene or Moto stating that.
Wouldn’t it be better if it DID? Wouldn’t that get around all the “tamper” detection stuff?
Right now I have Google Play disabled in my owner profile, but it would be nice if apps in secondary profiles could pass the full Play Integrity checks… even though I’m actively trying to transition away from them.
For example Cisco DUO says my device with GrapheneOS installed has been tampered with, and I was hoping that would go away if I could just buy the phone with GrapheneOS installed.
In the long term, yes it would be better if it shipped.
However, if someone went to a phone store with a stock graphene on display and anything else next to it, which one do you think they’ll choose?
Until Graphene’s stock experience (i.e stock apps and launcher) mature enough to not look out of place next to google and apple, the average Joe will pick the more polished phone. I hope improving that is a task Motorola will be able to help with, while graphene keeps doing their thing.
Additionally with the app/play store dualopoly, Motorola would be shooting them selves in the foot if they didn’t ship with the play store.
Getting an option beside a pixel for Grapheneos is pretty cool and a big step forward. I hope new demand will be high enough to show the decision makers that its an endeavor worth continuing.
Until Graphene’s stock experience (i.e stock apps and launcher) mature enough to not look out of place next to google and apple
why, what’s the problem with it? that it’s not filled with promotional apps?
Additionally with the app/play store dualopoly, Motorola would be shooting them selves in the foot if they didn’t ship with the play store.
they could just ask in the setup flow whether to install the play store
Honestly I can’t tell the difference with the launcher compared to what shipped on the phone, not that I used that very much - but I upgraded from an LG G8 and the whole thing looks very familiar. The camera app feels very much like the one on my LG but I suspect someone who is more into photography than me would be frustrated by it. But the standout awful stock app has got to be the clock, the ui is clunky and feels awful to use, the tones are obnoxious, and it has all the visual flair of a C student project.
I’ve mostly just replaced it with the alarm on my smart watch.
However, if someone went to a phone store with a stock graphene on display and anything else next to it, which one do you think they’ll choose?
Given the past couple years I’d like to think the fraction to choose graphene would be multiple times what it would have been 5-10 years ago. But not close to a majority.
I’m not sure about that. I have been using Graphene for a bit, and its surprising due to Google just how much stuff breaks and simply doesn’t work or fails silently under Graphene. It feels like one of the old school Custom ROMs which is great, but not on your daily driver phone.
if someone went to a phone store with a stock graphene on display and anything else next to it, which one do you think they’ll choose?
People consider the phone features too. For example Huawei has built a really solid following due to their phones’ quality and that following didn’t go away when Google started sabotaging their phones. Eventually banking apps started releasing versions for Huawei AppGallery (the Huawei Android app store).
So the Google monopoly can be bent if there’s sufficient demand.
It doesn’t even need to be in the store, just let me order one online and check off a “GrapheneOS” box, the same way that I can order a Framework laptop with either Windows or Linux.
But I get your point, I can see how someone could get confused when their phone arrived and required some extra tinkering to get Google stuff to work.
It wouldn’t go away. It will only go away if Google signs grapheneos images. Grapheneos on all supported devices support the required attestation already. It is just Google pettiness.
I believe the play services agreement
MotorolaLenovo signs to get the play store on their devices would forbid that.Yes sure. I was merely commenting on the misunderstanding surrounding this.
Man, I would be all over the is of it was on lower end models so I can run graphene as my sketchy international travel phone. But I don’t really want to pay flagship prices for that. And I still believe in having a curated primary digital fingerprint.
And I still believe in having a curated primary digital fingerprint.
Could you please elaborate? I know what digital footprint is, minimizing and compartmentalization techniques, but not primary and curated digital footprint.
Having no footprint is as obvious as having a unique one. It’s easier to hide in the crowd.
On lower end you could go with lineageos, it’s not as good as graphere but it’s good enough IMO
I just got a pixel 9 refurbished for 350CAD and, a part from the irony of needing a phone made by google to have a degoogled phone, Graphene is a great OS. It just does what any basic phone os should do, and that’s make it gold in the current dystopia.
What will US do if lenevo is Chinese and owns Motorola and now the US doesn’t have backdoors like they do on Apple and Google devices.
How about 6 camera lenses, so it doesn’t wobble?
I’m waiting for the “whoops!! All Lenses!” Version
The onion needs to do for phone cameras what it did for Gilette razors:
https://theonion.com/fuck-everything-were-doing-five-blades-1819584036/
I was hoping that when Apple released thr iPhone 17 with a horizontal island it would end the wobble on a lot of phones, as others tend to copy Apple.
Unbelievably and fucking annoyingly, the iPhone 17 still has one of it’s fucking camera lens jut out enough to fucking wobble still. Which fucking engineer okayed this fucking shit.
I still want a google pixel for the visor, but last year I bought a S24 Ultra as it was cheaper and I don’t like the performance of the Pixle 9 overall. (I always buy the previous gen of current year, when I need to). Oh well, after my S24U breaks maybe when pixel 14 or 15 comes around I’ll get a pixel. Or some other phone with a visor camera island like it.
This is great and all, gives more device options for GOS. However, being only flagship, this will put GOS out of reach for alot of people due to the cost of flagship phones and the current economy. Especially if Google starts making future Pixels unable to have GOS flashed onto them.
Sign me up for a graphene razr ultra please and thank you. Dont have any issue with self install if it doesnt ship that way
Honestly? Kinda prefer it.
Hope an updated clicks keyboard comes out for it.
Would be the most interesting usable android phone since the LG V20 IMO
