Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS • Hacker News Board

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#441

Post by alpineman » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:29 PM UTC

maxloh wrote: post #431

BatteryMountain wrote: post #108

If anyone from Motorola reads this thread; the market is beyond ripe for a good shake up. Going full open source and pushing updates & openness, user control and freedom, you will gobble up a good chunk of market share. Make MDM easy & first class (no third parties...), and a ton of corp will roll it out too. We need you more than you think.

I don’t think so. Motorola Mobility is owned by the Chinese Lenovo, making it an adversary-owned entity in the eyes of most Western governments. Even with a fully open-source OS and first-class MDM, the company would struggle to gain significant market share. The Hardware Root of Trust and the binary blobs would still be compiled by a firm that Western governments view as a fundamental supply-chain risk.

I never worked in a corporate that didn't use Lenovo

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#442

Post by gib444 » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:31 PM UTC

strcat wrote: post #275

flexagoon wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Daniel Micay is still running the project despite announcing he'd step down a while ago. You can see the entire team on their Github

The directors of the the GrapheneOS Foundation and the other things you're talking about are public information. I stepped down as lead developer due to relentless harassment preventing me from being productive. The same people targeting me with harassment misrepresented what was happening. You shouldn't get info about GrapheneOS from Hacker News comments especially when multiple regulars here are part of the attacks…

That is a pretty poor and disappointing reply to be honest.

They asked a reasonable question and you barely even responded to anything they asked. The community deserves a response to the question.

What with this new chapter, it might be better for someone else to handle PR and comms for the project

(Signed, passionate GrapheneOS user of a few years)

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#443

Post by Noaidi » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:32 PM UTC

oarsinsync wrote: post #439

Noaidi wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can barely use my iPhone 16E after the liquid glass update so I will say for me, it was one year.

That's nuts. My iPhone 13 actually feels quicker after the iOS 26 update (and this is the first time I think I've said that about an iOS update since it was iPhoneOS / single digits)

Part of the issue with the 16E is that is is using a binned A18 chip. when I heard it was using the A18 chip I decided to buy it, but it seems the GPU sucks, and Glass is so GPU intensive so...

https://www.macrumors.com/2025/02/21/iphone-16e-geekbench-bi...

It was fine without liquid glass, but I unfortunately missed the downgrade window,

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#444

Post by gib444 » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:33 PM UTC

flexagoon wrote: post #301

strcat wrote: post #275

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The directors of the the GrapheneOS Foundation and the other things you're talking about are public information. I stepped down as lead developer due to relentless harassment preventing me from being productive. The same people targeting me with harassment misrepresented what was happening. You shouldn't get info about GrapheneOS from Hacker News comments especially when multiple regulars here are part of the attacks…

I'm aware of what happened, and I'm getting GOS news directly, not from HN. However, you're still the biggest contributor of code to GOS (judging by commit history). That's what I meant.

> and I'm getting GOS news directly, not from HN

And from a director themselves! strcat is one of the directors in case you didn't know (Daniel). Which makes his reply quite bizarre

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#445

Post by amelius » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:40 PM UTC

sfdlkj3jk342a wrote: post #166

amelius wrote: post #156

But where is the EU? They should be funding FOSS like they are funding science.

I don't think the EU wants FOSS phones. If anything they'll push regulations that make them illegal to own. They want backdoors for all of your communication.

Check this reply:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47216751

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#446

Post by fwipsy » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:42 PM UTC

bastard_op wrote: post #125

The motorola phones are neat, especially razr's, but practically disposable with their dismal update support lasting in some cases only a year or a major version I'd read. Selling me a $1500usd flip phone that is practically disposable oob for updates is a non-starter. Now put GrapheneOS on it with better support than the vendor can provide, now that's highly appealing. I wanted to get a used pixel 9 pro xl to update…

Adding graphene doesn't extend the support lifespan, it still depends on manufacturers for low-level security patches.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#447

Post by butz » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:42 PM UTC

I was hoping that GrapheneOS would partner with Sony, but alas. Motorola Moto G (2014) was a great phone. They should bring back devices in similar form factor and no camera bumps. 3.5mm headphone jack wouldn't hurt anyone either. And make cover from decent material, not the one that becomes sticky after several years.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#448

Post by razingeden » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:49 PM UTC

Zak wrote: post #350

neya wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is just developer fantasy. The average consumer doesn't care even one bit. Is the phone smooth? Does it have a good camera? Does it have a good battery? Does it last more than 2 years? Go to some developing countries around Asia and you'll be surprised how people prioritise features when buying a phone vs developed ones. The developing countries account for most of the sales of most phone manufacturers. Phones t…

It's not just the average consumer. I continue to be surprised that so many developers and other tech nerds - the type who post on HN - chose and continue to choose the iPhone over Android when Apple dictates what apps they can install and locks third-party accessories out of certain features. Current times do present the opportunity to raise awareness of the issue though. App store bans for apps like ICEBlock, and v…

Apple is doing a marvelous job of destroying the whole “it just works” or “it’s easy to figure out how to ____” thing they had going on. I would get over on an android 10-12 years ago and get exasperated about even trying to send a text message on the damned thing. Which, unfortunately can also now be said about the Apple experience.

Apple doesn’t care what I think about their battery draining bloated garbage software anymore so I’m quietly quitting and don’t care about them either.

I just finally gave away my MacBook to someone who needed it more than I do .. I loathe Tahoe… as much as I do ios26… but haven’t cut the cord with the iPhone YET.

GrapheneOS seems to be the only contender that will get me to go along with that,(I’m running it on a pixel7 and warming up to it but still go back to iPhone to do some things I have no patience for figuring out on the pixel.)

Motorola may seal the deal. If they offer a cool device. I had a Nexus 6 (I think) that Motorola made and it was cool, it was just already obsolete when I got my hands on it. I could root it and do whatever I wanted on it, and half the reason I got into iPhone was that I could readily jailbreak those once upon a time. And can’t now.

So I have this fisher price piece of shit Apple device I can’t do anything fun on and the battery’s dead after 2-3 hours of use when … I paid extra for so called “pro max” devices for the extra battery capacity alone… the whole reason I even went down that road was getting lost in New York City with a dead battery a few too many time, this thing used to go 12-15 hours under ios18…

Motorola had made several of my favorite phones ever before an iPhone existed. We’ll see. I don’t think anyone even enjoys or wants an iPhone anymore. We are all just fucking , and getting fucked by, Apple until someone better comes along.

What else disgusts me about Apple is all the subtle ways they want you even more addicted to or dependent on your device. iCloud bullshit. In device subscriptions. Oh use our password manager and have a unique fucking 30 char password for every single site . Would you like a proprietary “passkey” so you’re forced to reach for your god damned iPhone another 15 times a day! 2fa? Authy won’t run on gOS. Just all this endless shit I’m going to have to divorce and migrate off of as well to get rid of them. And i will because i hate this company now. Please put them out of society’s misery for us.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#449

Post by mmooss » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:50 PM UTC

I wish GrapheneOS the best. If their mission is user security and freedom, transparency is necessary. As far as I can tell, there is little public information or indications of trust. Daniel Micay posts on this thread that the names of the directors (Micay, Dmytro Mukhomor, and Khalykbek Yelshibekov) is publicly available, but that is very little information and isn't nearly sufficient to facilitate trust.

Their website grapheneos.org says nothing I can find about who or what is behind it; that is a red flag. I don't think Micay or Mukhomor are even mentioned. Github doesn't seem to say much either (not that end users will know about or look at Github).

I read that Mukhomor is running things, which is something I just learned despite following GrapheneOS - was there an annoucement? Is Mukhomor's bio anywhere? Who the heck is Mukhomor? Users' privacy depends on that person - very few have the time and ability to audit the code, and probably nobody has the ability and time to audit the code thoroughly enough that we don't need to trust Mukhomor, as well as Micay, Yelshibekov, and probably others we don't know about. Why should I trust Mukhomor, Khalykbek, and the unknown others?

Also, Google and Motorola, part of Lenovo which is subject to the Chinese government [0], are not the most encouraging partners. I know all the debate behind it and perhaps there are no good alternatives and I'm glad GrapheneOS is diversifying its hardware, but GrapheneOS should provide openness on why they trust Google and Motorola.

I have reasons to trust Linus Torvalds and other Linux leaders, Theo de Raadt, Mozilla, and many others - not perfect reasons, but some indications. I have reasons to trust Daniel Micay based on history and public activities.

[0] I know Google can be influenced by the US government; it's not the same thing but indeed also an issue, especially with the current administration's embrace of pressuring business and against individual freedom (e.g., Anthropic).

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#450

Post by bloomingeek » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 3:51 PM UTC

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #252

bayindirh wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If this translates to longer device retention (if you enable battery changes, a current gen device can easily last a decade), people will care. $200 phone that you can use for 5+ years without handicapping the user will be a much bigger hit. This translates well to the boots paradox. This can change "cheaper is much more expensive in the long run" to "cheaper is a bit more expensive on the long run". This, of course,…

> boots paradox For those that don’t know what they meant, here you go[0]. I’ve always been a fan of Quality, but Quality costs, and people that get rich, generally do so, by selling lots of lower-quality stuff. Hard to compete against. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boots_theory

Excellent info and article. I'd not heard of this paradox, but I've always told my kids, "If you have to spend more to get quality, go for it." I will say though, if I won't be using a product very often, but still need it, I will buy something at a lower cost/quality.