Tlhokaina I thought the GOS team would have the phone built to their security specs.
Sometimes two very different things are confused:
- Several low-end phone makers are happy to let groups re-badge their existing low-end phones, since the cost of doing that is pretty low... it doesn't cost that much to paint a different logo on the outside, nor to tweak the bootloader to display a different brand. This is cheap but not at all relevant to the GrapheneOS project.
- With enough money, phone manufacturers will build a motherboard to customer specifications, and then get it FCC tested (etc.). This costs a lot of money for a small build volume. The result would probably be a $2,000 phone which could be repaired only by mailing it back to the factory, and might not be accepted by cellular carriers in some countries.
As I understand it, the GrapheneOS project is pursuing a different approach:
- Work with a vendor who has an existing phone design that is 96% of the way to meeting the security standards of the GrapheneOS project and is interested in investing some time and money to close the 4% gap. Assuming this can be done, it will be great to have that as an alternative to the Pixel platform.
Such a device would likely be feature-competitive and cost-competitive with typical phones, would be tested for compliance with a variety of national standards, and would have some sort of repair network.
However, this would inherently not be an opportunity for the GrapheneOS user community to vote on various hardware features that some people are passionate about, such as a removable battery, kill switches, a headphone jack, an IR blaster, a built-in projector, an ectoplasm detector, etc. Asking for those features on this forum will not increase the likelihood of them shipping in a GrapheneOS/OEM collaboration phone in 2026. For that matter, asking for those features here won't improve the likelihood that Google will ship those features in a Pixel either!
It is very faintly possible that the GrapheneOS team might have the opportunity to influence the design of the first collaborative device, but it would likely be in terms of things like whether the device would be larger or smaller. If it makes sense to poll the community about something like that, that might happen -- but maybe not, if the OEM specifies all of the non-security features, or if there isn't time. It is somewhat more possible that if the collaboration goes well then the team might have more influence over the second device.
Please note that I do not speak for the GrapheneOS project.