Motorola confirms GrapheneOS support for a future phone, bringing over features

Previously: Leak confirms GrapheneOS & Motorola partnership for non-Pixel hardware

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It’s now officially confirmed. You can take the warning off now.

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Very few details to go with. :sad_but_relieved_face:

It seems like Lenovo will ship bloated version of GOS in their enterprise offerings :thinking: .

Given the “features" of lenovo’s “security sodtwares", it is likely to be privileged system apps, which cannot be disabled without using adb.

Please provide sources and or evidence of Motorola bloatware. Also, Graphene OS retains control of its OS. If Motorola wants to fork it and add things, who cares? You will be able to install GOS on a future Motorola phone.

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Since @TinFoilHat mentioned “security features”, I must point out that the security-related “bloatware” needn’t necessarily be on the Android side of things (installed as system apps or even run as privileged daemons). There’s about 3 or 5 different ‘operating systems’ running alongside Android or may run instead of Android (though, Android is predominantly what most users interact with).

That said, I am confident the GrapheneOS team would require Motorola/Lenovo to be transparent about those, if included (for whatever reasons).

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Welcome to the forum!

Bad news though, GOS won’t be available on budget phones, only flagship devices like the signature and the fold (please :folded_hands:)

Having partnered with Motorola, and not a lesser-known company, could be a good step toward removing the stigma that GrapheneOS is meant for criminals.

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I don’t think we should even legitimize the implication that only criminals use it by even calling it that. If we do, then using the word “stigma” becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

It’s the same as calling it sideloading. It’s not sideloading. It’s installing apps you want, how you want, from whomever you want on hardware you fully own. Installing apps that is outside of an app store doesn’t or should not by default make it illegitimate.

Plus, owning a Pixel and doing what you want with something you own is or should not ever be considered criminal by default and automatically. Let’s not say things that keeps implying such is the case.

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Some things in the privacy and tech space have a PR problem and we must fix such things by discussing it better and more factually.

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Source is the announcement itself

Evidence? I said “it seems like", based on how Lenovo brought up their analytics platform and the so called Motorolla secure app.

it is possible that Lenovo will ship vanilla GOS, but if it is customer facing, I cant imgine how many support tickets they will receive, solely due to how GOS operates as well as its limitation.

If lenovo could make it possible to factory reset to either GOS or stock Android, that would be great,

It seems to be more sensible to make it corporate facing, but I struggle to imaging how it would not bloat/ alter GOS if they are to include those security feature.

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Has the Pixel line been banned in those countries? If not, I see no reason Moto would be banned.

That LTT vid honestly didn’t help. Ik the video itself is informative, but the way it’s framed initially with the title and thumbnail doesn’t do grapheneos justice and hurts the image. It sucks how the privacy space as a whole is viewed through a certain lens by those who don’t understand it.

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Sorry if I‘m missing anything here of if this was said already but I am very sure to have read that GrapheneOS said on Twitter

that the phones of the major OEM (now being confirmed to be Motorola) will still get shipped normally with Android and you have to flash GOS still on them. So I guess the whole discussion on bloatware of @SmartCondor and @TinFoilHat is obsolete

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Couldnt find that post yet, if its true thats great, it means their partnership is about helping Motorolla to harden mainstream android, as well as their “thinkshield”, in exchange Motorolla would open some resources to GOS.

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I love the attention GrapheneOS is getting, but admittedly, I don’t understand what’s in it for Motorola, apart from maybe regaining some of their lost mojo? I hope it translates to some further recognition for the project. Maybe it’ll be easier to convince some critical apps to whitelist them now that a serious OEM has attached its name to it.

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I would think that Motorola would want to sell phones with GrapheneOS out of the box too as an option, and they’d also want to include their stuff with it.

But I would also imagine people will be able to flash GOS manually, direct from GOS. So, maybe it will be like a typical Windows install situation, where you buy a laptop and it comes with the OEM’s random stuff, but you can always download a fresh Windows ISO to install a clean version from Microsoft.


Or maybe that won’t happen, but GOS will simply add Motorola’s apps to the included GOS App Store, that seems like another reasonable possibility to me.

Or maybe GrapheneOS won’t support any of Motorola’s stuff at all, and Motorola’s main benefit will be adding certain GrapheneOS features to their own stock operating system, without ever selling a version with official GrapheneOS out of the box. Who knows really? I suppose only Motorola and probably GOS know at this point :man_shrugging:

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That’s my biggest question. Will Sandboxed Google Play ever be able to get Google’s Play Certified stamp of approval? I’m not sure if this is a pathway to that happening, but it’d obviously be huge for banking apps, etc.

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I highly doubt it. It greatly impact the capability of Google Play Service, which might be required for Google’s (future) compliance on whatever stupid laws governments pass.

Unless GOS team could once again improve upstream AOSP for those complainces issue, however thats a very long shot.

Unlikely, since they don’t license it proper and this seems to be the prerequisite to any certification, on top of which they don’t comply with Compatibility Definition Document and have no intention to. I don’t see it.

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I think GrapheneOS will eventually reach a critical mass of users and gain enough of a reputation that not supporting it, despite how easy they make it, could seem awkward for companies that purport to care about security. I think it’s a better bet.