It’s an aging tablet. I already have an iPad and have tried to harden it using PG settings as a guide. I would prefer not to buy another iPad, but may if that’s the best balance between features and security.
I use privacy screen protectors on all of my phones. Not ideal, but helps mitigate against shoulder surfing. In university, I used to have a 3M privacy screen protector on my laptop. IMO, Samsung’s implementation is a really good start and I’m excited for the future. Too bad their software is garbage. Apple is rumored to deploy such a screen on a next-generation MacBook.
In terms of investments in baseband processor/modem security GrapheneOS have usually mentioned Qualcomm as a leader. This will be interesting as Google are rumoured to be going with MediaTek for their 11 series who have a reputation as neglectful and much less competent.
Where they have been behind recently is maybe the TEE implementation and Arm MTE support. Apart from I think maybe one occasion in the past with the Lenovo Thinkphone, Motorola haven’t yet invested a dedicated secure element like Samsung, Google and Huawei, so they will use Qualcomm’s SPU to fulfil that role which may be a bit worse but has at least seen investment from other OEMs over time including Microsoft.
More information on devices being sold with GOS preinstalled:
Devices being sold with GrapheneOS is highly likely but there may be significant limitations on availability due to Google’s restrictions. It remains to be seen what can be worked out. It’s very likely they can be sold in at least certain countries such as European Union countries and South Korea where Google’s restrictions have been invalidated. It may not be possible to sell them in the US or Canada at this time. That doesn’t mean they can’t be flashed and sold by others.
That would be part of the deal, if you’re talking about Graphene. They likely would not come with Graphene pre installed, as that is a security risk on its own. You will likely have to flash the device yourself.
Disagree. Motorola wants to use GOS to sell phones. Your ‘normal human’ average consumer won’t flash an OS themselves. I’ll be floored if Motorola doesnt at least offer a pre-installed GOS variant
Agree. Official GOS guidance will surely be to run their installer & manually flash
It’s not about what normal users want, normal users don’t know what Graphene is. Graphene’s team has said time and time again that you should not buy phones with Graphene pre installed. I would be very surprised if they suddenly changed tune, because after all, it is a security risk, and installing Graphene takes one click of a button in a browser.
Not the end of the world, but it goes to show how powerful big tech is. I’m sure there will be plenty of YouTube videos showing Americans how to flash the Motorola phone to GOSS.
We’re on a privacy forum discussing all the intricate details of this OS project that has oir trust with a large existing market belonging to Google that they have all but discarded to support for and you don’t know what Motorola has to gain?
And btw, we’re just the early segment of GrapheneOS market who is technical and nerdy enough to do all the steps ourselves. There’s a whole new market that would prefer this option if they didn’t have to do all the bootloader stuff themselves. The company will basically get organic marketing and phone sales through virtue of being the new dedicated phone supplier for a well established and trusted phone OS.
For Graphene Foundation, they will have way more leverage with Motorola than with Google in regards to remaining true to the original mission.
From the outside it seems like a win for all except Google who hasn’t shown much interest anyways. Phones aren’t their moneymaker.
They have confirmed it’s highly likely some devices will come with GOS out of the box, at least in some countries.
GOS wants to reach a wider audience and even if installing is easy with the web installer, it’s a lot of friction for many non technical people.
Because it’s done by third-party companies in an unofficial way. It’s different if it’s an official partnership. Though you can still reinstall if you want. Or wipe data from recovery and then confirm the device is running genuine GOS with the verified boot key fingerprint and the Auditor app.
The good news is that they said they’re still going to support Pixels. That’s important. I think more phones with more privacy features are the better. Hopefully, GOS can also influence what kind of hardware is included in a phone. I’m actually excited that something is being done to counter the surveillance state.
Sony phones also contain Chinese components. Your paranoia is causing you to think irrationally. You should look at the entirety of the product instead. Motorola can’t spy on you if they don’t have the software on your phone controlling the hardware. If the rumored kill switch materializes, I would trust the Motorola phone even more than a Google Pixel.
You have your threat model, I have mine, don’t call it paranoia, you are shaming the very thing you (I hope) want - more privacy and security. Software is one thing, firmware is another. If Motorola’s firmware is closed sourced and not shared with GOS you know nothing about what it does. I get it you are trusting China, I have no issue with that, I simply don’t and in my book its way less of an issue if there are “some parts” but its made whole elsewhere, rather than being fully made and flashed in china. I am not saying Sony is, I honestly don’t know, I don’t have Sony, it was an example of non-chinese brand..
The initial Motorola devices with official GrapheneOS support will be the next generation flagships. Motorola Signature (2026) which is the predecessor ranks 1 above the Pixel 10 Pro XL on Smartphone Ranking - DXOMARK so there’s no need to worry about camera quality. The devices will have much higher CPU/GPU performance than Pixels and comparable camera quality. Pixels will still have advantages and will still be supported but these devices will be better in many areas. There will be security advantages of each too, but we expect that it’s possible to provide better security against remote attacks with Snapdragon especially as we can work with Qualcomm via Motorola.
Lower end devices will take longer to meet our requirements for updates and hardware-based security features including hardware memory tagging. Support for lower end devices can be expected but almost certainly not in 2027. In 2027, there will likely be around 3 supported flagships as a starting point (regular, flip and fold). We can still accept 5 years of updates rather than 7 but the updates still need to be as complete and without added delays. It should at least be possible to support devices similar to the ‘a’ series Pixels as a subsequent phase.
Motorola is now supporting their flagships for 7 years. We’ll do the same but we’ll do our usual much more frequent updates with security preview variants of our releases with those patches early. We’ll also make sure we get the driver/firmware patches we need from them to ship them on time even if they decide to be more cautious. We don’t know exactly what their update schedule is going to look like but we won’t be depending on the stock OS releases for firmware, etc. anyway so it doesn’t really matter.
I think you’re missing my point. You simply cannot avoid anything related to China in an electronic. It’s just simply not possible. All you can do is take mitigation measures, which is what we all do here. If GOS says the phone is safe to use, then we just have to trust them. Other than that, I’d say remove all electronics from your life.
