- This is about preinstallation. For the planned models, you can install GrapheneOS yourself. This should be really simple, if it is similar to the current installation process for Pixels, which can be fully completed through their website.
- The preinstalled devices don't seem from Motorola themselves, as mentioned later in the thread: Probably not via their website but rather another company provided with the devices directly by Motorola. It could be us doing it ourselves but we aren't set up to deal with it.
Really excited for the Motorola GrapheneOS phones! (Currently have a P10P with GrapheneOS.)
That's my plan too. I do appreciate devices are coming and will be buying them, but the whole point is to trust custody of the software, which isn't handled by the preinstalled os in any scenario with any os.
Preinstalled GrapheneOS would be funded by state Honeypot operators, or potentially thieves or blackmailers.
If you wish to steal from someone, select from a population of thieves since they won't go to the police (although they may use illegal means to punish you).
Going with the stereotype that people doing illegal things prefer a secure OS (and are not smart enough to pick a safe source).
I'd love to see the GrapheneOS team gaining enough resources to hire developers who can work to increase the number of supported devices. The more devices that are supported (even if security is not at the same level as Pixel/Motorola hardware), as the more popular GrapheneOS becomes, the harder it will be for governments to target it.
My understanding is that the problem is not on GrapheneOS' side. We need more manufacturers to care and build devices that meet GrapheneOS' requirements.
My hope is that Motorola will be very successful with that. GrapheneOS currently has half a million users and growing. The more users it gets, the more interesting it is for manufacturers to actually consider it.
Google being Google, if Motorola gets a relatively cheap phone to run GrapheneOS (the flagship is quite expensive IMHO), I think people will flock away from Pixels (I definitely will, and I will tell everyone and their dog that they should when they renew their phone).
> GrapheneOS currently has half a million users and growing
That is a total install base right? Unless all 500k of them are upgrading yearly, this number is miniscule. You are underestimating the R&D required to put out a new phone each year only to have 30% (high estimate) of users buying it. That's 150k devices, which is not worth any volume.
For a smaller manufacturer (e.g. Fairphone), that may mean a lot. If I remember correctly in 2021 Fairphone was selling 100k phones per year?
Also I am genuinely interested: is it that hard to meet GrapheneOS' requirements? Feels like it shouldn't take years of R&D for every new iteration. And also that it's about getting the right deals with the suppliers, which is not really an R&D issue?
The upcoming Signature 27 will be announced today at the Snapdragon Summit. It has been teased by Motorola on their socials and will likely release in the US because they've posted about it on US social accounts.
The 2026 Signature, in the UK, is $1460 USD. In Brazil it is selling for $1230. The Pixel 11 pro XL, which the Signature beats on hardware in practically every way sells for $1300 on Google's website.
It looks interesting... I didn't love the 2026 design [1] but it looks better than whatever this is. Here's pictures:
Flagship phones are so damn expensive for what you are getting. I just buy whatever is the current iphone SE which is usually around $300 for the top storage sku when I show up to buy it a couple years after release. At my current burn rate $1300 would be like 20 years spend on phones for me.
What stopped me from buying flagship phones is the repair costs for phones are far too expensive in relationship to the value of the phone. Results will vary, but waterproofing usually diminishes after a repair.
I am not the right market for flagship phones because I don't have thousands of dollars to put towards disposable income, but I would expect a premium phone to come with a premium warranty and repair service... Do they typically not?
AppleCare specifically covers water damage of any kind, and is what I would assume OP would be referring to as a "premium warranty and repair service".
Eh... get protection plan, or trade up every year for big discount on the next flagship. Or with AT&T plans you are getting a "free" phone fairly often if you don't intend to leave the carrier for a few years (most people wont). The parent comment you replied to makes some assumptions that you have to spend full price all at once every year which is false. Also, there's almost always a deep discount on Pixel phones around most holidays.
And if you truly are ultra budget $300 phone guy then sure this doesn't apply to you.
My current phone is definitely flagship for the time, ~$850, and I will be holding onto it as long as I can because flagships, with headphone jacks, available in the US, are something that just does not exist anymore, and I'm not spending $1500+ to import the cheapest Xperia only to have it barely work on my cell network.
That's also what I buy with Apple now. When I was using Android I'd buy a cheap "Moto G" for maybe $150 brand new. Never understood dropping a grand or more on a mobile phone.
Cameras of flagships are still significantly better than a $150 Moto G. If you are using a smartphone in place of a camera and like good-quality photos, it's worth the money. That said, flagships can last many years as well.
I update pretty frequently, but all the older devices get used by family members, etc.
The camera is probably the least important thing on the phone for me, but yeah if photos are important to you then that might rule out the cheaper tiers of phones.
Yeah, people have different needs. One of the nice things with GrapheneOS on Pixels is that you can even pick up the latest Pixel 10a for ~400 Euro (and older models even cheaper) and it will still have what Google calls a flagship chip, but more importantly all the nice security stuff like the Titan M2. For a mid-range phone it also has pretty ok cameras.
I hope that a few years down the line there will also be great midrange Motorola phones with GrapheneOS support. But they have to start somewhere.
Tbh this is up to Qualcomm more than anything. Pessimist in me says that they’ll gatekeep the security features to higher chips in order to max out profits.
I keep my phone until the security updates stop. I buy top of the line phones because cheaper one suck. I tried a cheap phone and it used to lock up all the time. These phones are crappier than my obsolete top of the line phone. There has got to be a middle ground between 1K flagship phones and cheap sub-$200 phones, but I swear I can't find it.
I just keep buying phones with way more features than I desire just so that having too many apps open at once or going to the wrong Javascript laden web page doesn't slow my phone to a crawl. I just tell myself that at least I only replace my phone every 5 to 7 years. If it wasn't for work, I'd keep them longer, but the OS has to be patched for work stuff to be on it.
> There has got to be a middle ground between 1K flagship phones and cheap sub-$200 phones, but I swear I can't find it.
The Pixel phones are precisely that, and they are the only phones supported by Graphene for now. The a-series is a particularly good value and I am posting from one.
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who thinks smartphone prices are just absolutely crazypants right now. I can't envision paying more for a phone than I would for a (gently used) workstation-class laptop.
Over decades of buying Android devices, I have yet to pay more than $300 for one. The one I'm using was actually free in exchange for buying a year of T-Mobile prepaid credits. No, it never was the fastest thing on the planet but it makes calls and runs the apps I want.
Have you priced a workstation class laptop recently? They’re over $3000 even with a paltry 32GB RAM
Miniaturization costs, and I would expect a flagship phone to cost at least as much as an equivalent CPU/RAM/storage laptop. The cost of miniaturization, modem, camera and OLED more than balances the bigger screen and keyboard/trackpad.
Also using Moto G-series phones for a decade or so now. Seems I have more junk (gambling apps, linked in, etc.) to scrub off them each time though.
I could see myself splashing out on a more expensive phone if it were less locked down - so probably never. However I don't play games and as a Gen-Xer my laptop is where the rest of my digital life lives; it makes sense that those for whom the phone is their primary device would prioritise it more (especially with somewhat predatory financing).
The only reason why I've decided to pay 500+ (for the first time in my life) for a flagship device was for a better camera and storage, as I wanted to have good quality photos of my kids.
That said, I will keep on replacing the battery until the circuit board itself turns into ash
Sadly there are no more iPhone SE models so this strategy won't work forever. Eventually iOS 18 will stop getting security updates and you'll have to use the increasingly worse newer versions of iOS.
> It just puts Google in the same sandbox Google puts everyone else.
Yes, you can do that, but Graphene is probably best used without Google apps at all. If you use Google Maps, sandboxed or not, Google still knows where you are, what speed you drive, etc, and can rat you out to car insurance companies or the government.
Yes, you can do that, but Graphene is probably best used without Google apps at all.
That totally depends on your goals. For some it's security, for some it's privacy from Google, for some it's removing the ability from Google to (worst case) remote brick/block your device. The latter may sound a bit far fetched, but if I was employed by, say the ICJ, I would know what system I'd run to avoid that.
One of the things that I like about GrapheneOS is that it accommodates all these use cases and on a gradient (e.g. personally privacy from Google is also important, but I like that I can use sandboxed Google Play Services with most of its permissions removed).
Graphene OS devs themselves recommend that you install apps on Graphene OS via Google Play Store for security reasons. They also explicitly recommend Graphene OS users to not use F-Droid or Aurora Store. Make of that what you will.
> Graphene OS devs themselves recommend that you install apps on Graphene OS via Google Play Store for security reasons.
Can you provide a source that they've said this recently? This seems to be a bit of a misrepresentation.
They say:
>The Play Store app is also the most secure way to install and update apps from the Play Store.
on /usage, but this does not indicate it's the most private way or that it's the recommended way to install apps. It seems to me to indicate that this is their assessment of the security of the ways to install apps that are distributed on the Play Store, not a recommendation or privacy assessment that applies to other apps or to their users in general.
They don't recommend against Aurora Store [1], but it is not user friendly as the Play Store because app installs frequently fail and automatic updates do not work as well. Installing apps from Aurora has the advantage of no google account, but Google is still handed a list of all the apps you have installed, IP address, app details, device details, and GSF ID. It will likely stop working or become even more broken. It is useful when apps block installs from the Play Store because of play integrity.
I use it myself for the few Google apps I install like Camera because I don't want to install play services.
I would consider their actual recommendation to be their own App Store and Accrescent (alpha).
Obtainium is great but not user friendly.
The claims about problems with F-Droid are true. It's not like they oppose FOSS, their whole operating system is FOSS and they've never said anything bad about IzzyOnDroid, which fixes the problems with F-Droid and even adds a bit of security.
And here I am with my 26 Signature, still on Android 16 with Patch Level from January and the phone reporting happily, Looking Good! Everything up to date!
the thought of having a phone, which i touch all day, set on many surfaces, put in my pockets etc having a fabric enclosure is so gross to me. did they just forget that people use their phones on the toilet? or while they eat messy food? that gold/tan model is bound to look like a busy parent of 4's minivan interior within a month.
What I care about is banking app support. Both my credit unions (large, national ones) lock down their phones apps so they do not work on GrapheneOS. Yes, you can install certain Google packages to change that, but no guarantee that will work in the future.
Devices are sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled, just not by GrapheneOS. If your paranoia needs aren't high but you just want to get away from Google, it seems like a good idea.
You can also factory reset, check boot key hash, and use Auditor to verify integrity on devices sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled. That's what they currently recommend to do for Pixels sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled.
I changed bank because they stopped supporting GrapheneOS for bullshit reasons (they support my completely unsecure and outdated /e/OS but not GrapheneOS, and they call that "security").
The only way a bank cares is if enough users complain and leave for another bank. Banks (like all companies, but especially banks) care about money and nothing else.
>Probably not via their website but rather another company provided with the devices directly by Motorola. It could be us doing it ourselves but we aren't set up to deal with it.
I presume this bit is because Motorola can't sell devices with android builds that aren't certified by google (as per Google Mobile Services contracts)
The official GrapheneOS docs contains a developer guide on how to fix banking apps when they are not working. Bank app developers have been surprisingly receptive to making the changes, weirdly enough. You can see in some of the issues tracked on the site where people reached out and the developers eventually made the apps work.
I've been running GrapheneOS for a while (I have posts on the blog in my bio if you want to see some day-to-day info) and only one bank app gave me trouble. I had to toggle a setting and then everything worked.
Separate from this is wallet and payment apps which still have not had much traction on GrapheneOS.
I was also surprised by the banking app experience. After making me verify my identity about 10 times to prove I'm me and not a hacker, they finally let me use it...
I've heard some people had good results by going to their bank branch and demanding them to unblock their phone or they'll close their account. Apparently they have a checkbox to disable phone attestation requirements for a customer.
It is likely a crapshoot, and while that list is informative it is necessarily a snapshot in time. FWIW, my banking apps have worked with no issues and have worked continuously since I migrated to GrapheneOS. I do have Play Services installed to be able to use Android Auto, and that required some fiddling with permissions before it started working, so your mileage may vary. By far the biggest annoyance for me is group text messages not being delivered while using an alternative user account, but that's a niche setup I guess.
I don't know if that's really significant. But yeah technically you give up less information by using the card directly instead. But it's like going from 98% privacy loss to 99%.
Cash and Monero are private so they're in a different space and are what should be prioritized.
It's more difference than you think. Your card isn't logged into Google, Facebook, Signal and so on. It doesn't route through Cloudflare. It doesn't even connect to T-Mobile, Verizon, or Stingray automatically.
GrapheneOS has convinced apps to add compatibility. Hell, Roblox has official GrapheneOS support. The idea is to get more users in order to convince the very few apps that block GrapheneOS, to support it.
My banks (in Europe) work fine. The primary thing that is missing is tap-to-pay because Google is abusing its monopoly position and not letting GrapheneOS pass remote attestation. There are some apps that have their own tap-to-pay, such as Curve in most of Europe and PayPal in Germany, but they don't work great everywhere (e.g. where I live, all payment terminals accept tap-to-pay based on debit cards, but more than 50% does not accept credit card-based tap-to-pay, so something like Curve or Garmin Pay doesn't work in many stores).
I didn't notice anything suggesting that Curve is "credit card-based" (from what I remember it was advertising debit in EMV). Curve worked for me everywhere in Poland, Czechia, Germany, Austria, Romania and Sweden.
FWIW the financial institutions I use (all major US brokerages) have no issues with Google attestation, and if they implemented it I'd just move all my assets out to a different one.
I don't regularly use an actual bank account anymore, the cash management solutions from these brokerages work great and can do everything including direct deposit, payments, wire transfers, and ATM/debit cards, and have SIPC protection in place of FDIC.
Some banks are open (well as much as a financial institution can be) to GrapheneOS too. Navy Federal implemented attestation and then rolled it back once they heard from GOS users which was super cool of them and honestly unexpected.
Pretty much, but you would be surprised at just how low some of these phone RAM setups can go.
I had a low end Oppo 'something', I remember the RAM had a 16bit data bus, the whole thing had a peak theoretical bandwidth at just over 4GB/sec. That phone sauntered through the workload at the best of times. The Mediatek chip was probably not the weaklink for once.
On the upside the battery could go well over a week between charges.
Unfortunately the privacy/security features GrapheneOS requires as well as just the ability to replace the OS are only put on premium phones. You can buy an a series Pixel a few years behind to get it in the price point you want. But this won't save money long term because the price per year of support is worse than newer models like the 10a or 9a.
Although if you just want a degoogled phone with some features and don't want to hide a criminal enterprise, I doubt an out-of-support Graphene phone is any worse than an out-of-support Huawei or Xiaomi or Realme or Motorola phone.
Do you know if that's the process for the 2026 Signature? I don't remember exactly but GrapheneOS may have mentioned that for the current Motorola flagship devices the unlocking isn't as onerous.
Considering Motorola is doing a lot of the porting, I would guess it will be improved or will be easy.
Even if they do sell graphene(android) devices there is still a good chance that it wont be enough to keep a full function linux phone off the market.
I would sooner buy a trump phone then graphene, it's not as pretentious and it's more shiny.
Two clarifications:
- This is about preinstallation. For the planned models, you can install GrapheneOS yourself. This should be really simple, if it is similar to the current installation process for Pixels, which can be fully completed through their website.
- The preinstalled devices don't seem from Motorola themselves, as mentioned later in the thread: Probably not via their website but rather another company provided with the devices directly by Motorola. It could be us doing it ourselves but we aren't set up to deal with it.
Really excited for the Motorola GrapheneOS phones! (Currently have a P10P with GrapheneOS.)
I am not too sure about this. There is no company I trust to sell GrapheneOS-preinstalled phones other than GrapheneOS themselves.
We are going to be reinstalling GrapheneOS on the phones shipping with it.
That's my plan too. I do appreciate devices are coming and will be buying them, but the whole point is to trust custody of the software, which isn't handled by the preinstalled os in any scenario with any os.
Well you could always use the GrapheneOS Auditor (hardware-based attestation) to verify. Although simply re-installing is about as much effort.
Preinstalled GrapheneOS would be funded by state Honeypot operators, or potentially thieves or blackmailers.
If you wish to steal from someone, select from a population of thieves since they won't go to the police (although they may use illegal means to punish you).
Going with the stereotype that people doing illegal things prefer a secure OS (and are not smart enough to pick a safe source).
GrapheneOS is installed with their keys which you can verify, right?
You can verify the installation integrity via android attestation, which grapheneos uses
I'd love to see the GrapheneOS team gaining enough resources to hire developers who can work to increase the number of supported devices. The more devices that are supported (even if security is not at the same level as Pixel/Motorola hardware), as the more popular GrapheneOS becomes, the harder it will be for governments to target it.
My understanding is that the problem is not on GrapheneOS' side. We need more manufacturers to care and build devices that meet GrapheneOS' requirements.
My hope is that Motorola will be very successful with that. GrapheneOS currently has half a million users and growing. The more users it gets, the more interesting it is for manufacturers to actually consider it.
Google being Google, if Motorola gets a relatively cheap phone to run GrapheneOS (the flagship is quite expensive IMHO), I think people will flock away from Pixels (I definitely will, and I will tell everyone and their dog that they should when they renew their phone).
> GrapheneOS currently has half a million users and growing
That is a total install base right? Unless all 500k of them are upgrading yearly, this number is miniscule. You are underestimating the R&D required to put out a new phone each year only to have 30% (high estimate) of users buying it. That's 150k devices, which is not worth any volume.
For a smaller manufacturer (e.g. Fairphone), that may mean a lot. If I remember correctly in 2021 Fairphone was selling 100k phones per year?
Also I am genuinely interested: is it that hard to meet GrapheneOS' requirements? Feels like it shouldn't take years of R&D for every new iteration. And also that it's about getting the right deals with the suppliers, which is not really an R&D issue?
The upcoming Signature 27 will be announced today at the Snapdragon Summit. It has been teased by Motorola on their socials and will likely release in the US because they've posted about it on US social accounts.
The 2026 Signature, in the UK, is $1460 USD. In Brazil it is selling for $1230. The Pixel 11 pro XL, which the Signature beats on hardware in practically every way sells for $1300 on Google's website.
It looks interesting... I didn't love the 2026 design [1] but it looks better than whatever this is. Here's pictures:
https://xxcancel.com/moto
https://x.com/moto
[1] https://www.motorola.com/gb/en/p/phones/motorola-signature/s...
Flagship phones are so damn expensive for what you are getting. I just buy whatever is the current iphone SE which is usually around $300 for the top storage sku when I show up to buy it a couple years after release. At my current burn rate $1300 would be like 20 years spend on phones for me.
What stopped me from buying flagship phones is the repair costs for phones are far too expensive in relationship to the value of the phone. Results will vary, but waterproofing usually diminishes after a repair.
I am not the right market for flagship phones because I don't have thousands of dollars to put towards disposable income, but I would expect a premium phone to come with a premium warranty and repair service... Do they typically not?
No they don't. Even waterproof phones damage due to simple water spill get denied warranty (even from Apple).
https://www.apple.com/applecare/
AppleCare specifically covers water damage of any kind, and is what I would assume OP would be referring to as a "premium warranty and repair service".
That isn't my read.
ApplecCare is as much a warranty as their Apple's phone are guaranteed waterproof.
It's marketing.
The 3 year warranty add-ons is an insurance. One can get an insurance for any device.
Eh... get protection plan, or trade up every year for big discount on the next flagship. Or with AT&T plans you are getting a "free" phone fairly often if you don't intend to leave the carrier for a few years (most people wont). The parent comment you replied to makes some assumptions that you have to spend full price all at once every year which is false. Also, there's almost always a deep discount on Pixel phones around most holidays.
And if you truly are ultra budget $300 phone guy then sure this doesn't apply to you.
My current phone is definitely flagship for the time, ~$850, and I will be holding onto it as long as I can because flagships, with headphone jacks, available in the US, are something that just does not exist anymore, and I'm not spending $1500+ to import the cheapest Xperia only to have it barely work on my cell network.
That's also what I buy with Apple now. When I was using Android I'd buy a cheap "Moto G" for maybe $150 brand new. Never understood dropping a grand or more on a mobile phone.
Cameras of flagships are still significantly better than a $150 Moto G. If you are using a smartphone in place of a camera and like good-quality photos, it's worth the money. That said, flagships can last many years as well.
I update pretty frequently, but all the older devices get used by family members, etc.
The camera has actually been getting worse now that they bake in AI smoothing to muddle details. I think we hit the sweet spot already going forward.
The camera is probably the least important thing on the phone for me, but yeah if photos are important to you then that might rule out the cheaper tiers of phones.
Yeah, people have different needs. One of the nice things with GrapheneOS on Pixels is that you can even pick up the latest Pixel 10a for ~400 Euro (and older models even cheaper) and it will still have what Google calls a flagship chip, but more importantly all the nice security stuff like the Titan M2. For a mid-range phone it also has pretty ok cameras.
I hope that a few years down the line there will also be great midrange Motorola phones with GrapheneOS support. But they have to start somewhere.
Tbh this is up to Qualcomm more than anything. Pessimist in me says that they’ll gatekeep the security features to higher chips in order to max out profits.
I keep my phone until the security updates stop. I buy top of the line phones because cheaper one suck. I tried a cheap phone and it used to lock up all the time. These phones are crappier than my obsolete top of the line phone. There has got to be a middle ground between 1K flagship phones and cheap sub-$200 phones, but I swear I can't find it.
I just keep buying phones with way more features than I desire just so that having too many apps open at once or going to the wrong Javascript laden web page doesn't slow my phone to a crawl. I just tell myself that at least I only replace my phone every 5 to 7 years. If it wasn't for work, I'd keep them longer, but the OS has to be patched for work stuff to be on it.
> There has got to be a middle ground between 1K flagship phones and cheap sub-$200 phones, but I swear I can't find it.
The Pixel phones are precisely that, and they are the only phones supported by Graphene for now. The a-series is a particularly good value and I am posting from one.
I'm impressed you can get them with headphone jacks. It's too bad they don't support memory cards too
> If it wasn't for work, I'd keep them longer
I think if work demands a better phone, then work should be buying you a better phone.
Moto G Power is the cheap phone that hasn't sucked for years. I've bought many been happy. The one time I tried a Samsung, it was a mistake.
but they bumped up prices significantly a few months ago due to chip prices or tarrifs or who knows what, it's not so cheap anymore.
Do you get security updates with these old android phones?
>There has got to be a middle ground between 1K flagship phones and cheap sub-$200 phones, but I swear I can't find it.
In my experience this is literally the iphone SE. Look at the chipset, its no slouch.
I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who thinks smartphone prices are just absolutely crazypants right now. I can't envision paying more for a phone than I would for a (gently used) workstation-class laptop.
Over decades of buying Android devices, I have yet to pay more than $300 for one. The one I'm using was actually free in exchange for buying a year of T-Mobile prepaid credits. No, it never was the fastest thing on the planet but it makes calls and runs the apps I want.
Have you priced a workstation class laptop recently? They’re over $3000 even with a paltry 32GB RAM
Miniaturization costs, and I would expect a flagship phone to cost at least as much as an equivalent CPU/RAM/storage laptop. The cost of miniaturization, modem, camera and OLED more than balances the bigger screen and keyboard/trackpad.
Also using Moto G-series phones for a decade or so now. Seems I have more junk (gambling apps, linked in, etc.) to scrub off them each time though.
I could see myself splashing out on a more expensive phone if it were less locked down - so probably never. However I don't play games and as a Gen-Xer my laptop is where the rest of my digital life lives; it makes sense that those for whom the phone is their primary device would prioritise it more (especially with somewhat predatory financing).
The only reason why I've decided to pay 500+ (for the first time in my life) for a flagship device was for a better camera and storage, as I wanted to have good quality photos of my kids.
That said, I will keep on replacing the battery until the circuit board itself turns into ash
An old Samsung S10 takes stunning pictures. Mid range phones at 300 USD are incredibly good at taking shots.
But our appreciation keep getting skewed because flagship phones make leaps forward.
Sadly there are no more iPhone SE models so this strategy won't work forever. Eventually iOS 18 will stop getting security updates and you'll have to use the increasingly worse newer versions of iOS.
I assume this means they will just start buying the E series, The 16E is nearing two years old and already in the sub $400 range for used ones.
Current street prices in Austria:
~750€ for the Motorola Signature, with 512 GB storage
~900€ for the Pixel 10 Pro XL, with 256 GB storage (the 11 Pro XL costs much more at ~1200€, since it just came out a month ago)
Probably the price for Moto signature is that low only because they're right about to launch the next version.
That’s not saying much. The selling point of pixels has always been the software.
The selling point of graphene is basically that you get the pixel software experience.
It just puts Google in the same sandbox Google puts everyone else.
Typing this on a pixel running graphene.
> It just puts Google in the same sandbox Google puts everyone else.
Yes, you can do that, but Graphene is probably best used without Google apps at all. If you use Google Maps, sandboxed or not, Google still knows where you are, what speed you drive, etc, and can rat you out to car insurance companies or the government.
Yes, you can do that, but Graphene is probably best used without Google apps at all.
That totally depends on your goals. For some it's security, for some it's privacy from Google, for some it's removing the ability from Google to (worst case) remote brick/block your device. The latter may sound a bit far fetched, but if I was employed by, say the ICJ, I would know what system I'd run to avoid that.
One of the things that I like about GrapheneOS is that it accommodates all these use cases and on a gradient (e.g. personally privacy from Google is also important, but I like that I can use sandboxed Google Play Services with most of its permissions removed).
Graphene OS devs themselves recommend that you install apps on Graphene OS via Google Play Store for security reasons. They also explicitly recommend Graphene OS users to not use F-Droid or Aurora Store. Make of that what you will.
> Graphene OS devs themselves recommend that you install apps on Graphene OS via Google Play Store for security reasons.
Can you provide a source that they've said this recently? This seems to be a bit of a misrepresentation.
They say:
>The Play Store app is also the most secure way to install and update apps from the Play Store.
on /usage, but this does not indicate it's the most private way or that it's the recommended way to install apps. It seems to me to indicate that this is their assessment of the security of the ways to install apps that are distributed on the Play Store, not a recommendation or privacy assessment that applies to other apps or to their users in general.
They don't recommend against Aurora Store [1], but it is not user friendly as the Play Store because app installs frequently fail and automatic updates do not work as well. Installing apps from Aurora has the advantage of no google account, but Google is still handed a list of all the apps you have installed, IP address, app details, device details, and GSF ID. It will likely stop working or become even more broken. It is useful when apps block installs from the Play Store because of play integrity.
I use it myself for the few Google apps I install like Camera because I don't want to install play services.
I would consider their actual recommendation to be their own App Store and Accrescent (alpha).
Obtainium is great but not user friendly.
The claims about problems with F-Droid are true. It's not like they oppose FOSS, their whole operating system is FOSS and they've never said anything bad about IzzyOnDroid, which fixes the problems with F-Droid and even adds a bit of security.
[1] https://nitter.freedit.eu/GrapheneOS/search?f=tweets&q=auror...
The thing I like about GrapheneOS is it's the most private operating system while still having great usability.
And here I am with my 26 Signature, still on Android 16 with Patch Level from January and the phone reporting happily, Looking Good! Everything up to date!
Get your update process working @Motorola!
Nevermind. I just need to remove my SIM card and use a VPN to Spain to get updates. wtf
the thought of having a phone, which i touch all day, set on many surfaces, put in my pockets etc having a fabric enclosure is so gross to me. did they just forget that people use their phones on the toilet? or while they eat messy food? that gold/tan model is bound to look like a busy parent of 4's minivan interior within a month.
What I care about is banking app support. Both my credit unions (large, national ones) lock down their phones apps so they do not work on GrapheneOS. Yes, you can install certain Google packages to change that, but no guarantee that will work in the future.
Sounds like something you should be complaining to your bank about, not grapheneos.
Devices are sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled, just not by GrapheneOS. If your paranoia needs aren't high but you just want to get away from Google, it seems like a good idea.
You can also factory reset, check boot key hash, and use Auditor to verify integrity on devices sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled. That's what they currently recommend to do for Pixels sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled.
Would corporate BYOD and bank apps work, though?
I changed bank because they stopped supporting GrapheneOS for bullshit reasons (they support my completely unsecure and outdated /e/OS but not GrapheneOS, and they call that "security").
The only way a bank cares is if enough users complain and leave for another bank. Banks (like all companies, but especially banks) care about money and nothing else.
>Probably not via their website but rather another company provided with the devices directly by Motorola. It could be us doing it ourselves but we aren't set up to deal with it.
I presume this bit is because Motorola can't sell devices with android builds that aren't certified by google (as per Google Mobile Services contracts)
Might someone know whether banking apps worldwide will work?
This site tracks the status of what apps work: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
The official GrapheneOS docs contains a developer guide on how to fix banking apps when they are not working. Bank app developers have been surprisingly receptive to making the changes, weirdly enough. You can see in some of the issues tracked on the site where people reached out and the developers eventually made the apps work.
I've been running GrapheneOS for a while (I have posts on the blog in my bio if you want to see some day-to-day info) and only one bank app gave me trouble. I had to toggle a setting and then everything worked.
Separate from this is wallet and payment apps which still have not had much traction on GrapheneOS.
I was also surprised by the banking app experience. After making me verify my identity about 10 times to prove I'm me and not a hacker, they finally let me use it...
I've heard some people had good results by going to their bank branch and demanding them to unblock their phone or they'll close their account. Apparently they have a checkbox to disable phone attestation requirements for a customer.
Heh. USA user here. Several of the apps that say they work I have been unable to get to work.
So anyone reading this, be aware your experience may differ.
I'm on a pixel 10 pro and have never been able to get some of banking apps to work, despite the list saying they should.
It is likely a crapshoot, and while that list is informative it is necessarily a snapshot in time. FWIW, my banking apps have worked with no issues and have worked continuously since I migrated to GrapheneOS. I do have Play Services installed to be able to use Android Auto, and that required some fiddling with permissions before it started working, so your mileage may vary. By far the biggest annoyance for me is group text messages not being delivered while using an alternative user account, but that's a niche setup I guess.
> Separate from this is wallet and payment apps which still have not had much traction on GrapheneOS.
Curve works in Europe and Paypal has a trial thing in Germany for tap to pay IIRC. There's nothing in the US unfortunately, yet.
If you want more security and privacy, don't use your phone for payment - use your card.
I don't know if that's really significant. But yeah technically you give up less information by using the card directly instead. But it's like going from 98% privacy loss to 99%.
Cash and Monero are private so they're in a different space and are what should be prioritized.
It's more difference than you think. Your card isn't logged into Google, Facebook, Signal and so on. It doesn't route through Cloudflare. It doesn't even connect to T-Mobile, Verizon, or Stingray automatically.
You can check your specific app here: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
GrapheneOS has convinced apps to add compatibility. Hell, Roblox has official GrapheneOS support. The idea is to get more users in order to convince the very few apps that block GrapheneOS, to support it.
Probably not, because of Google attestation, the cancer of Android.
My banks (in Europe) work fine. The primary thing that is missing is tap-to-pay because Google is abusing its monopoly position and not letting GrapheneOS pass remote attestation. There are some apps that have their own tap-to-pay, such as Curve in most of Europe and PayPal in Germany, but they don't work great everywhere (e.g. where I live, all payment terminals accept tap-to-pay based on debit cards, but more than 50% does not accept credit card-based tap-to-pay, so something like Curve or Garmin Pay doesn't work in many stores).
At any rate, there is a well-maintained list here: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
I didn't notice anything suggesting that Curve is "credit card-based" (from what I remember it was advertising debit in EMV). Curve worked for me everywhere in Poland, Czechia, Germany, Austria, Romania and Sweden.
FWIW the financial institutions I use (all major US brokerages) have no issues with Google attestation, and if they implemented it I'd just move all my assets out to a different one.
I don't regularly use an actual bank account anymore, the cash management solutions from these brokerages work great and can do everything including direct deposit, payments, wire transfers, and ATM/debit cards, and have SIPC protection in place of FDIC.
Some banks are open (well as much as a financial institution can be) to GrapheneOS too. Navy Federal implemented attestation and then rolled it back once they heard from GOS users which was super cool of them and honestly unexpected.
If they have legal requirements for attestation, they also have the option to properly attest Graphene.
Yep. Not sure all of them are attesting GrapheneOS, but there's at least 5 banks officially supporting it.
https://github.com/PrivSec-dev/banking-apps-compat-report/is...
vanguard? I have considered just closing my bank account and having my paycheck direct deposited there
Everything in Sweden I've tried works.
I imagine that banking apps will begin to have better support for GrapheneOS as it rises in popularity.
Amongst the several banks I deal with, only one uses Google's attestation framework in a way that blocks GrapheneOS.
That said, the website still works fine for that one.
To whom it may concern, I want $100 grapheneos phone.
The DDR ram costs more than the phone now. Wish I was joking. =3
Pretty much, but you would be surprised at just how low some of these phone RAM setups can go.
I had a low end Oppo 'something', I remember the RAM had a 16bit data bus, the whole thing had a peak theoretical bandwidth at just over 4GB/sec. That phone sauntered through the workload at the best of times. The Mediatek chip was probably not the weaklink for once.
On the upside the battery could go well over a week between charges.
China already has domestic Flash and Dram fabs that are growing rapidly.
Xiaomi and Huawei will likely adapt their supply chains accordingly. =3
I wish they will bring a €200 device with GrapheneOS out
Unfortunately the privacy/security features GrapheneOS requires as well as just the ability to replace the OS are only put on premium phones. You can buy an a series Pixel a few years behind to get it in the price point you want. But this won't save money long term because the price per year of support is worse than newer models like the 10a or 9a.
So, 7a at your pricepoint:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/820099695470
But, it's only supported for 1.6 more years.
So that puts it at $143 per year of support. While the 10a [1] will be supported for 6.4 more years, which puts it at $55 per year of support.
[1] https://www.ebay.com/itm/137767347717
Although if you just want a degoogled phone with some features and don't want to hide a criminal enterprise, I doubt an out-of-support Graphene phone is any worse than an out-of-support Huawei or Xiaomi or Realme or Motorola phone.
Good. Though i hope i'll see GOS for the P11A (expecting it will come out) so i can upgrade my 8A.
i really like the pixels, and haven't been fond of motorolas in recent years
The Pixel 11s have been a decent downgrade from the 10s. You might want to consider getting a 10 or 10a while they're still cheap.
Will the pre-installed GrapheneOS phones still show up as "rooted" to things like Microsoft Authenticator?
Depends how they implement their check, but if they do it correctly it would show the bootloader as locked and detect no su binary (no root).
If they use Google SafetyNet to basically block everything non-Google-certified™ then no.
Are there any GrapheneOS-capable devices that still have an SD card slot and a 3.5mm port? Bonus points if the battery is removable.
I will also accept "Sending my consciousness back to my 2016 body." Better yet, 1996. Got some things I wanna fix.
Will they be unlockable?
Yes. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47241551
Have they confirmed whether Motorola will change their onerous unlocking process to be more like the Google Pixels?
Do you know if that's the process for the 2026 Signature? I don't remember exactly but GrapheneOS may have mentioned that for the current Motorola flagship devices the unlocking isn't as onerous.
Considering Motorola is doing a lot of the porting, I would guess it will be improved or will be easy.
nice
now give me a device with a mechanical switch that gaps the radio power physically
I'm only buying it if it comes with a secure raccoon feeder.
pinephone has this but it never really became a thing
Librem too
Even if they do sell graphene(android) devices there is still a good chance that it wont be enough to keep a full function linux phone off the market. I would sooner buy a trump phone then graphene, it's not as pretentious and it's more shiny.
> buy a trump phone then graphene
Did you mean "than"?
I love Linux (been using it as my daily desktop for decades), but we're a long ways off from a true Linux phone.
Will you put a Linux phone on the market?