I completely missed this when the HMD Secure announcement was made.
Come to think about, we have heard rumors about an OEM that is only recently investing in secure devices with fast OTA updates.
Could HMD be that OEM? Seems like the Ivalo XE will be released Q1 2026 so we don’t know anything else about it besides that it runs an enterprise SOC and is rugged.
EDIT: It will be running on the Qualcomm Dragonwing Q-6690 SOC specifically. Here is the website for the actual phone.
I mentioned it here a little bit ago. What is afaict the same device is also listed by Bittium: Absolute Government-Grade Mobile Security - Bittium Tough Mobile 3 with more information on the specs if you download the datasheet.
Honestly I don’t think this is super interesting to most people here these devices aren’t intended for consumers. I’ll also reiterate that HMD is not a top 10 Android OEM so there is no reason to believe they are the OEM GrapheneOS is collaborating with.
I’ll complete mentioning that following this 2023 chart, the only non-chinese top 10 smartphone manufacturers are Apple, Samsung and Motorola. Leeaves little doubt about which one is their partner.
Putting aside that the top 10 OEM list may have changed since then, this is ultimately still speculation though. You haven’t disclosed why you’re assuming they wouldn’t work with a Chinese OEM. Motorola (Motorola Mobility LLC) is also owned by Lenovo anyway.
On a more positive note, timely security updates and OS upgrades for five years is something Motorola (outside Android One?) have never been able to do. So even if they were the OEM it would potentially be a great boon for Motorola users worldwide.
Over the years, I have had four HMD phones, and the hardware was excellent.
GrapheneOS on potential HMD hardware is very interesting.
