- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
- cross-posted to:
- android@lemdro.id
Any non Google phone running graphene would be epic.
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 …
Been using motorola for a long time. I bought Moto Z in 2016 and it booted with “Motorola company” text in the end of the boot video. After Lenovo acquisition, phone updated and video now said “Motorola, a Lenovo company”.
Thankfully, Motorola haven’t entshittified over these years. Still a solid phone. Almost no bloat.
They spotted an opportunity
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.
Chop chop flashlight?
Motorola phones have a feature that allows you to “chop” with your phone twice to turn on/off the flashlight. It sounds super mundane, but it is way more convenient than you can imagine. Especially for me as an athletic trainer when I’m testing pupil response during a concussion evaluation. They also allow you to twist your phone twice to open the camera, but I don’t find that as convenient since double tapping the lock button also works.
That’s pretty cool. Did you ever find it activating accidentally?
No. You have to be pretty deliberate about it. Honestly, its pretty impressive how well tuned it is.
Now I need to try it somehow
Just tried it on my razr, had no idea it was a thing but that’s not surprising given I don’t really set up accessibility features on my phones. You do have to be quite forceful with it, kind of whipping it back once at the end of a swing. Neat.
If you have tasker on Android or GOS there’s a download for it called ‘chop to flashlight’ and can adjust the sensitivity so it doesn’t turn on in your pocket or bag.
maybe my next phone will be a Motorola.
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.
yeah i might focus on Android phones that have Good ROM/ support
i think their graphene OS powered phone will have bootloader unlocking.i hope Google does not take away Sideloading. (but i think graphene returns it)
i bought a mororolla 3 years ago and it still lasts 2 days on a charge. id say go for it.
i gotta see first if Motorola/Lenovo will actually ship graphene OS and other factors.
they dont sound like bad phones and even better with this collab
If I can get GrapheneOS + headphone jack + SD card slot, I am in.
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.
That would be like a dream come true. I’m about to become excluded from mobile technology as my phone seems to be starting to present hardware failures, and I can’t stand to use large ones.
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.
I didn’t even realise “no SD card” was an option. That’s shitty and awful.
+1 for the headphone jack
Let’s see if it gets released before GrapheneOS and unlockable bootloader get outlawed
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.
I am sure they are also seeing a growing demand for more privacy, the only reason own a pixel is because of GrapheneOS. If I could buy a phone with the OS pre installed I would, don’t know if they are going to do that. Also, by patterning with GrapheneOS they don’t has the development cost and they can trade on Graphenes name
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Android seems intent on creating a huge market for this. Chef’s kiss!
I actually bought a new Motorola phone 2 months ago precisely because i wanted a phone with an unlockable bootloader, and motorola delivered that.
Vote with your wallet.
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’ll buy if decent specs and price good
I solely need camera, contactless payments and projection for cars. If it is capable of these I am pre ordering.
Contactless payment will not happen under grapheneOS, it relies on google play services and integrity check. Graphene does have sandboxed play services, but it doesn’t pass integrity check.
That’s not true. Google Pay (or Wallet?) doesn’t work on GrapheneOS. NFC and contactless payments work perfectly fine. You can use Curve Pay or in Poland BLIK via bank apps.
OK, none of these are supported where I live…so YMMV
As much as I hate PayPal, this is probably your only option for NFC payments on GrapheneOS then
Contactless payments does not need to be Google Pay. There are alternatives.
Using contactless nfc payment on my grapheneos phone almost daily.
Just not Google Wallet.
What are you using? It’s the only google thing I haven’t been able to terminate (and play services, for now)
In a lot of European countries there are local payment apps that work as alternatives. Some banks even have payment support in their own apps.
Check your local market for alternatives, though if your market is the US then there probably isn’t any.
GooglePay does Graphene is very capable of contactless payment.
Projection for cars?
I think he means the equivalent of car play.
Android auto equivalent.
Does GrapheneOS support Google Pay?
It’s the other way around. Google specifically blocks Goodlgle Pay being used on GrapheneOS. I believe there’s another contactless payment app called Curve or something that works on GrapheneOS. Requires Google Play Services installed though.
No.
But third party payment apps might work. I’m using one for contactless payments and it works just fine.
Probably not if it depends on Google Pain Services?
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Yup, it uses a sandboxed version that you can control.
Edit: Fuck me…it’s early and my dyslexic ass read “play” not pay.
It supports google play services, but google pay does not work on graphene.
No but nfc is present and nfc contactless pay works if your banking app has it native in their app. Curve pay is a good workaround.
My biggest concern is the life cycle of the device. I almost went with Motorola for my last phone, but saw that you were lucky to get 3 years of OS updates. Is that likely to be better on GrapheneOS? If so, that is a huge win imo. If not, it still isn’t ideal because I don’t want to have to buy a new phone every 2 years…
GrapheneOS was claiming 5-year support IIRC. Apple level support is infeasible. Not sure how affordable longer firmware support from Qualcomm is.
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.
I mean, I sort of get what you are saying but it also feels a little like Grimes’s boots thing from Terry Pratchet. Like, I can spend $200- $300 and get a phone that will stop getting security updates in 2-3 years… Or I can spend $700-$1000 to get a phone that comes with 7-10 years of security updates. Money per year, you are the same or better off if you can afford the up-front cost of the more expensive product, and we are generating a lot less techno-garbage clogging up the planet.
Generally, I hate the hard limit of use of these things. Coming from desktop computers, if you spend more money the machine is faster, but if you don’t need the speed you can use the cheap machine just as long (or longer if you really don’t need performance). All phones feel like they are just a subscription model.
Thats the trick, when a company supports romming, you can extend the support for however long you want!
But gos dropped support for pre-6 Pixels so not quite.
Never had graphene, but been using Lineage since it was called CyanogenMod on my Galaxy Nexus
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.
Yea, except you aren’t getting security updates either… Basically anything connected to the internet should be getting security updates…
Fucking finally. Please be a Qualcomm chip.
Moto flip phone with GOS? sign me up. Should not have to choose between form factor and operating system.
a future smartphone to have GrapheneOS pre-installed
I’ll not trust Lenovo (Motorola is Lenovo) preinstalling stuff on my phone. They’ve already ship Windows laptop with literally malware and backdoors (even in UEFI, so persistent across format) preinstalled.
I will rather install it myself.
That’s nice, but how much will those phones cost? Will GrapheneOS be an option on the low end devices or will they only support “some” devices, which happen cost as much as a Pixel anyway?
Pixels have hardware documentation and are directly supported by Android, making them possible for the GrapheneOS dev community to support. Good luck doing that on a Samsung.
Motorola is doing good here. Also, buy a used Pixel 8, you’ll have almost three years of support left.
That’s the thing, even used Pixels are almost twice the price of what I paid for my new phone.
Back when I bought my phone I considered that route. but then since I can’t replace the batteries on new phones without risking destroying the device. And there’s a big probability that the phone comes with an almost dying battery.
I also understand that GrapheneOS can’t be installed on any “unlocked” phone, it needs to be OEM unlocked and most sellers don’t know/specify, so ended up considering too expensive and too much of a risk.
I asked Motorola for an OEM unlock code for an Edge 30 Neo and got it straight away. I then installed Lineage OS 22, and the phone is working really well. The total cost is one-third of what a used Pixel 8 would cost.
Pick your poison. Want cheap? Be tracked. Want privacy? Pay the price.
Hey mate, don’t need one of the Motorola’s, buy a second hand pixel, I’ve got a 6 and a 10 pro (soon to be converted to GOS now that there are stable builds since it’s my daily).
It’s a bit of a shock compared to stock android but you’ll actually feel like you own and control your phone again (like I do here on the pixel 6), but you’ll lose features like the scam block, hold for me etc. that the stock OS does).
The onus becomes on you to keep the device secure, you can do another user profile to install stuff you want separate and it works nicely. It’s all sandboxed and asks your consent before giving any permissions to an app, like android used to.
While the Motorola/GrapheneOS news is interesting, it’s a shame that GrapheneOS’s lack of root access continues to be a significant limitation. For users who prioritize data ownership and the ability to create full, local backups (Swift Backup being a prime example), it’s simply not a viable option. Security is important, but so is control over your own data.
Have you seen the “Shizuku” app? It utilises the debugging api to give some extra permissions that regular apps wouldn’t usually get. Works on GrapheneOS and can give SwiftBackup a lot more power on devices that can’t grant root access. You might find you don’t need full rooting.
W Moto ❤️🩹




















