Motorola partnership announcement

littlerack

EverettHitch but that's reasonable. It shows the project team is committed and persuasive, and there are a great chances for a backup device in the event pixel hw goes south as of 3rd party solutions like GOS. I personally plan to stay with pixels for as long as it's possible due o their strong practicality (2nd hand market etc, dirt cheap), but it's a benefit for me to have an alternative

EverettHitch

littlerack do you have to have an opinion on everything? Don't burn out my friend like many before you.

CactusPrecookHumidOperator

I have a couple of questions:

Could we see a GrapheneOS supported tablet by Lenovo/Motorola before support for the Pixel Tablet ends and
Could GrapheneOS support future AluminiumOS laptops potentially produced by them (if ever at this point)

littlerack

EverettHitch I allow you to ignore me, feel free to

whiskeywalrus

I really hope Moto Tags will work on this new device, as GOS hasn't so far had any supported tracking devices. Even though Samsung's Smart tags seem to somewhat work with uTag, having officially supported one would be miles better.

Vsratoslav

but those are going to be a gos-compatible mobiles, not the preinstalled ones, as I understand

blackrose

Very happy for the GOS project!
However, I am a bit worried about potential hardware backdoor from the US. It reminds me the "secure phone" honeypot created by a Federal agency few years ago...

I hope the GOS foundation will be able to perform hardware oversight in a way or another.

userofgos

EverettHitch As of now I don't trust anything past 9th gen Pixel.

Now I'm curious as to why. Hello old friend ;)

Johnnyloans

jeeringsequel I'm hoping some other affordable, smaller models will come out, but it's pretty unlikely.
Viewpoint0232 6.7" screen and is therefore very large, but is there any reason why it HAS to be this way? Samsung and Apple also manage to make "normal-sized" flagship phones.

If I am understanding the below quote correctly, there will be more than one option for GOS.

It will initially be flagships similar to the current generation Motorola Signature, Motorola razr fold and Motorola razr ultra since those will be the 2027 devices meeting our requirements including the expected updates and hardware memory tagging but it can expand over time.

https://xcancel.com/GrapheneOS/status/2028483890998845532#m

GrapheneOS

Johnnyloans There will be at least one supported flagship device but once we have one we should be able to add the other flagship variants too. Supporting lower end devices would be longer term since they're not likely to meet the requirements for a while.

GrapheneOS

@PlainDuck You're confusing 2 entirely different companies. Motorola Mobility was split from the company you think we're working with in 2011 and was then purchased by Google and sold to Lenovo. We're working with Motorola Mobility, the Lenovo subsidiary.

NetRunner88

As many countries now, ask to have mandatory Parental control one way or another, if it is not included in AOSP branch we will never see a Motorola sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled I believe.

California :
https://www.pcgamer.com/software/operating-systems/a-new-california-law-says-all-operating-systems-including-linux-need-to-have-some-form-of-age-verification-at-account-setup/

Europe :
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07x003vx0yo

A counter view on this :
https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/01/congress-wants-hand-your-parenting-big-tech

For my use i ask for a proper parental control or MDM (which can be the same thing or not)

MineralWater

I fear this partnership will not last long. The phones are in the 1000$/€ price range. This is more than double of what you normally pay for a Pixel with the common Google trade in Program.

So this will not bring many new users to GrapheneOS, maybe a few hundred, hardly in the low thousands.

It is sad that there is no competition to the Pixels - without affordable phones, Motorola will not be an option for people who want to use GrapheneOS.

Probably my expectations where way to high. But I had hoped it would be at least a competition to the 8/9/10 model series.

But honestly, it's not. It's like Graphene running only on Porsche, but next year you can run it on Bentley too.

Johnnyloans

MineralWater I fear this partnership will not last long

Future pixels are still a possibility. A lower end Motorola is possible when MTE isn't only in the most expensive CPU snapdragon has.

From Motorola's perspective:
For the cost of sending an email with patches, they receive more customers buying their products.

More OEMs is a far out possibility

andrej567

MineralWater as for me, agree. my budget is roughly the half of the mentioned price.. simply I would need a second device for "dangerous" things like biking or even playing solitaire on toilet.. I am using the cellphone just for calling, messaging, calendar, navigation, solitaire and sudoku. and it can happen I drop it, forget it somewhere for a while

Novalissoide

MineralWater not bring many new users to GrapheneOS, maybe a few hundred, hardly in the low thousands.

Isn't this a bit off? There's more than 8.000.000.000 people on the current planet, currently.

grayway2

MineralWater Motorola is not targeting only individuals but also business organizations with that partnership. The sales will not be equivalent to an iPhone or a Pixel but a few hundreds is exaggerated for me. The partnership will significantly help GrapheneOS to be trusted and recognized for what it is "a secure and private operating system" and if the customer will have the choice to get GrapheneOS preinstalled as I expect it will help the sales a lot.

In couple months, Google will launch the Pixel 11 with the new Titan M3 and Android 17. The Pixel 10 series is already a lot of work for GrapheneOS and they might not even want to work on the next Pixels or Google may no longer allow to unlock the bootloader.

MineralWater

Johnnyloans

I doubt that the market for thousand dollar phones is that huge. To be honest, the people who spend that much on a phone will not want to use Graphene-that will strip all fancy AI and other features from their phones. Of you pay that much, you want the full package.

I could guess only criminals might be attracted, they don't care about money and want to show off their wealth -and they need secure devices.

But the journalist in some developing or totalitarian country will sure not invest so much in a phone.

My guess is that GrapheneOS will not see a rise in users and hardly ever see a download of the Motorola specific Graphene Firmware.

It will be forgotten fast, even here in the forums it will not be mentioned often. Most new users struggle with getting an up to date Pixel and rely on the used phone market.

MineralWater

Novalissoide

Yes, but only 6 billion have a smartphone, the western countries are saturated and the African and Indian customers who don't have one yet prefer the low price range.

Globally the flagship market is 18% of all sales in 2025. The biggest sellers there are Apple and Samsung.

In Motorola's case we talk about sold units in the thousands, not millions. Apple and Samsung have millions, but still much less than their lower prices models.

How many of the Motorola flagship owners might want to use Graphene OS? Realistically it won't be more than a few hundreds. Because overall there aren't many.

Even on Pixels where you could install it on used Pixels you can buy for 150-200$ the market share of Graphene is some thousand users.

How could it be more on a 1k phone?

areaman

MineralWater Lots of people get flagship phones. They have a higher margin, and that covers some of the extra harware security features. I got a P8pro when it was new, because I wanted the performance and better cameras, not beause of AI. I think people see their perosnal bubble using one type of device and over-extrapolate to the whole market. Also, I am sure Motorola has tons of sales data on this sort of thing, they wouldn't be doing this if it was stupid.

JollyRancher

So Graphene is going to have these torn down physically and have full firmware access, right?

Motorola is a Lenovo company and they have already been caught shipping physically compromised devices for intelligence purposes.

A mass compromise of GrapheneOS phones would be a huge win for PRC intelligence interests and would not be hard for Lenovo to pull off in this case.

Honestly? Without supply chain security assurances and trusted third party security audits of ALL levels of the device, this issue makes these phones dead on arrival for me.

And note that I am someone who is absolutely willing to spend well over $2000 USD on a phone if it can meet my security and privacy needs.

0xC0DED0D0

Among all the pros and cons back-and-forth in this thread and other, let me just say that "I, for one, welcome this new partnership." 😉

Seriously, huge congratulations. We've already seen the partnership bear fruit in the security preview releases. Lots more to come, I bet!

Which is also my point – and the related question I'm getting to. No matter one's opinion on Motorola, the partnership is clearly beneficial for the entirety of the GrapheneOS community.

And, the question for @GrapheneOS: could this partnership also mean similar deals with other OEMs, as well?

Stated differently, does the deal come with an exclusion clause requiring GrapheneOS to be Motorola-only? If not, we could eventually see a shift in the entire Android market.

"Sure, but is it GrapheneOS Ready®?"

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