Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS • Hacker News Board

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#691

Post by AnthonyMouse » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

anonym29 wrote: post #671

Night_Thastus wrote: post #549

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah I don't think the common consumer thinks that the leap from a regular Android or Apple smartphone to something 'more open' is the leap from a horse-drawn carriage to an automobile. That's fantasy thinking.

You seem to be misinterpreting the implication. The implication is that the consumer would never ask for what they actually want, because the consumer can't even conceive the possibility of what they really want being available. Ask an exercise, ask yourself this: if you could offer every iPhone or Android shopper the choice between their current OS, and an otherwise exactly identical one that just wasn't listening t…

It's not just that. How many bugs or ridiculous misfeatures do existing phones have because the OEMs are teaching to the test for benchmarks or just don't care to fix them?

You were reading something on your phone, switched to a different app for 3 seconds and then back, and now it's an error page because you're in a poor cell coverage area but the device is nefariously aggressive at unloading apps to try to eek out a marginal advantage on battery life reviews. Worse, for well-behaved apps that actually degrades battery life because having to reload the app requires the device to do more work than letting it stay idle in the background.

Separate the software from the hardware and you don't have to worry about that, because they can mess up the stock image however they want for the reviews and you just have someone replace it with a version with those bugs removed.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#692

Post by jinzo » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

cromka wrote: post #677

bored13 wrote: post #675

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't OnePlus rumored to be on their way out? At minimum, sales haven't been great, & their upmarket push into becoming a mainstream premium brand hasn't perfectly worked out for them

That brand is 12 y/o and has between 3 and 5% market share, roughly the same as Motorola. Whether or not they make it doesn't matter, what matters is how they started as total amateurs with no brand and a beloved aftermarket ROM and where this got them.

They started (and still are?) as an Oppo spinoff. Very (very) far from 'total amateurs'.

I would very much like something other than a Pixel for GrapheneOS. But let's not get wild expectations based on false pretenses.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#693

Post by theLiminator » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 9:25 PM UTC

Grimblewald wrote: post #688

chpatrick wrote: post #655

Earlier quoted context omitted.

None of that sells phones.

It does and increasingly will. I've got my non techiterate friends and famkly getting quite concerned about privacy and de-googling. This is something that would on some level be appealing to all. Even if they cannot appreciarw the full depth. Hell, android enjoyed much love because of open it was. Now that google has decided to put an end to that, so too does end android love.

I doubt that more than 5% of the population knows what open source means.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#694

Post by jcgl » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 9:29 PM UTC

theLiminator wrote: post #693

Grimblewald wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does and increasingly will. I've got my non techiterate friends and famkly getting quite concerned about privacy and de-googling. This is something that would on some level be appealing to all. Even if they cannot appreciarw the full depth. Hell, android enjoyed much love because of open it was. Now that google has decided to put an end to that, so too does end android love.

I doubt that more than 5% of the population knows what open source means.

Well 5% of a massive addressable market it itself quite a lot.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#695

Post by NoImmatureAdHom » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 9:33 PM UTC

.gov would love a graphene-native phone if manufactured in the U.S. or by an American company

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#696

Post by jraph » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 9:34 PM UTC

theLiminator wrote: post #693

Grimblewald wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does and increasingly will. I've got my non techiterate friends and famkly getting quite concerned about privacy and de-googling. This is something that would on some level be appealing to all. Even if they cannot appreciarw the full depth. Hell, android enjoyed much love because of open it was. Now that google has decided to put an end to that, so too does end android love.

I doubt that more than 5% of the population knows what open source means.

Try "aware, even vaguely, of the privacy issues standard smartphones pose".

(I would bet more than 5% have at least a vague notion of open source though, and a positive a priori - also possibly mixing it with source-available, which would be on par with some people we can read on HN)

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#697

Post by tinco » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 9:36 PM UTC

theLiminator wrote: post #693

Grimblewald wrote: post #688

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It does and increasingly will. I've got my non techiterate friends and famkly getting quite concerned about privacy and de-googling. This is something that would on some level be appealing to all. Even if they cannot appreciarw the full depth. Hell, android enjoyed much love because of open it was. Now that google has decided to put an end to that, so too does end android love.

I doubt that more than 5% of the population knows what open source means.

Less than 5% of the population knew what it meant to install an app when the iPhone launched. I believe Steve Ballmer ridiculed the idea when asked about it.

A great many amount of people use Android to this day because of its more open nature, and that's despite Google's involvement. If Motorola could go back to its native roots, shake the idea of Chinese influence, and do open source proper, I bet there's a lot more than 5% of the market ready for it.

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#698

Post by Sarkie » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 9:38 PM UTC

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.

It'll be my next if it works

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#699

Post by aucisson_masque » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

poisonborz wrote: post #114

aucisson_masque wrote: post #75

Hopefully wireless payment do work on these, and they have face unlock working. That's really the 2 issues I have with grapheneos. I know it's supposed to be for privacy nerd, and they will tell you you shouldn't use Google pay because it's bad for privacy and so on... But it's not the majority of people, most are willing to trade some privacy for convenience.

I'd be more concerned for face unlock. You take an OS that goes to the extreme to prevent any external intrusion to your phone and you enable an option to unlock it for anyone by holding the phone to your face?

well the thing is, i don't do anything illegal, i don't have much to hide and even if the police asked me to unlock my phone, i'd do it !

What i don't like is having companies, google amongst others, siphoning my data and making money out of it, while offering in exchange a service that is becoming increasingly worst.

grapheneos with it's enhanced permissions and profiles is pretty god at preventing these spyware from stealing all my data, for instance you can have give whatsapp limited contact permission and make it run in a secondary profile.

face unlock is a tradeoff between security and convenience that i'd happily take ! But grapheneos doesn't give me that choice...

Re: Motorola announces a partnership with GrapheneOS

#700

Post by dt3ft » Mon, Mar 02, 2026, 9:39 PM UTC

Sarkie wrote: post #698

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.

It'll be my next if it works

Same here.