Motorola's GrapheneOS phones will launch in 2027 priced higher than Pixels
25 points by stilic
25 points by stilic
With what is happening lately with phones I start to think about what I will do when my current phone dies. I feel like giving up, so one option that I entertain is to buy a smallest and as cheap as possible Google Certified Android phone only for official apps like banking and some government apps. It would also serve as a hotspot for a separate full Linux device that I would use for everything else. The current contender is Bluefox NX1, which I bought for my daughter. I am not sure though about the Linux device, but with that I would have more options.
Hah, I have been thinking about this recently.
I call the Google Certified device the "compliance" device.
Honestly, I also increasingly think portable Internet-connected devices were a mistake. I do love reading my RSS feeds (and other "non-evil" activities ) on the go, but... I'm growing fonder of interacting with the Internet in a designated space in the house, with a full keyboard and big screen.
I should just get used to carrying a book at all times to entertain myself.
Hmmmmmmm I was planning to replace my aging OnePlus 9 with one of these. Not sure I want to drop $1300 on a phone. I guess it'll be another Lineage phone for me.
I mean, used Pixel devices aren't that expensive. I suppose if you really don't want a google device that makes sense.
You may really not want a Google device, with the way they're taking device support these days. In the linked GrapheneOS tweets you can see that Google is actively making it difficult for them to obtain source code for Pixel devices. It's not hard to imagine Google completely restricting access to source code in the future, meaning that while Google will security-support the device for the advertised lifespan, GrapheneOS cannot. (I'm not an expert on what blobs are in play, the licenses of the relevant components, etc. though, so take that assertion with a grain of salt - I'm just semi-wildly speculating.)
FWIW, if you want to exercise your rights as a Pixel owner to obtain GPL'd source code that is shipped in your device, the Google Form that you're supposed to fill out in order to do so is here: https://source.android.com/opensourcerequest
It would be a real shame if enough people exercised their rights to cause a large internal problem for Google in manually handling these requests, which it is obligated to fulfill under the license.
Important and disappointing detail from TFA: the phones won't ship with GrapheneOS pre-installed.
Would've been nice if they at least shipped it as an option when buying. Then (hopefully) no money would go to Google (like the infamous Microsoft tax on new computers) and the public in general would start to see there are alternatives (which would mean such alternatives would then be better-supported by app builders)
Doesn’t Google own Motorola these days?
Wikipedia says it's owned by Lenovo.
Simplified recent-ish timeline for Motorola Mobility:
In other words it is with Lenovo for over a decade now and it was with Google around 2 years.