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points by utopiah 2 days ago | 0 comments
Well "starting MSRP of $1,599." I'll stick to my 2nd hand Pixel 8 that I bought, for GrapheneOS long term support, for 1/10th of that price.

No doubt it's a way WAY better device, really, but I don't see where I would actually need that. I happily toss the one I have around and don't even care if it gets stolen or lost one day, different preference.

[–] palata 2 days ago
It's expensive, sure. But the news is huge IMO: GrapheneOS is getting enough traction that a manufacturer is willing to put some resources into supporting it.

My hope is that Motorola will continue like this, with cheaper models too.

[–] tommica 2 days ago
Just because someone is willing to make it does not mean the market will/can buy it. For that price I am out, I cannot afford it, and I really wanted one when I heard about the partnership.

But I agree with your sentiment, there is hope!

[–] subscribed 2 days ago
This is not the only device capable of running GOS for years. Like with pixels, you didn't have to replace the phone every year to keep using GOS.

Just buy something older (ideally version 8 or more recent) and switch to Motorola after few years, when Signature 27 is much less expensive.

[–] wiseowise 2 days ago
It’s not huge at all. It happened in the past (CyanogenMod) and failed.
[–] phasephantasm 2 days ago
That is a different story in that CyanogenMod had a for-profit company funded with venture capital built around it and where the owners flirted with closing the source for selling the OS, who then failed to sell it and sustain 130+ employees. GrapheneOS Foundation is a non-profit, funded for 12 continuous years with donations only, paying for less than 20 full-time employees, with an entirely FOSS OS project whose management actively avoided doing the same thing, despite GrapheneOS being more adept to permissive FOSS licenses rather than CM's and anyone's beloved GPL. CyanogenMod management blamed its hired developers during their fall for "not sharing the same vision" as the company, who decided to sell the OS to OEMs instead of just keeping it there, open for whomever wants to use it, which is what is happening here with Motorola. It's very important to note that there is no money changing hands between GrapheneOS Foundation and Motorola Mobility.
[–] stonewhite 1 day ago
I also remember Samsung hiring the CyanogenMod lead dev and they only released nightlies afterwards, until they even stopped that.
[–] silisili 2 days ago
If it makes anyone feel any better, Moto in particular never stays at MSRP long. I'd expect it to be well under $1000 within a month or two, which is a sweeter spot.

That said, I've never seen a regular Moto phone nearly this expensive, so who knows.

[–] judge2020 2 days ago
RAMpocalypse is real and high end phones are definitely going to feel it the most. I wouldn't be surprised if Motorola had to pay an insane amount of money to get any ram allocation at all.
[–] alpha_squared 2 days ago
Small correction: I think budget phones will feel it the most. The budget market has been practically wiped out at this point.
[–] Forgeties79 2 days ago
Crazy to think we were picking up 16gb M2 Mac mini’s for like $800 a few years ago.
[–] wtallis 2 days ago
That seems to be drastically understating the change.

The M4 Mac mini was announced two years ago with 16GB RAM standard, starting at MSRP of $599, without anything like an education discount (which knocked another $100 off the machine), and stayed at that price until early this year when supply simply evaporated. Then the M6 model this fall went up by $300 for the same base memory and storage capacities. +50% in overall price of the entry-level machine, and probably not much of it was due to the M6 being a more advanced processor than M4.

[–] Kirby64 2 days ago
$800? They were below that on sale. I seem to recall the all time low was $400 for 16gb models of the mini at one point.
[–] californical 2 days ago
Yeah I got my M4 (I think) MacBook Air for the “Black Friday” sales last November, 16GB, for $699. From Best Buy, brand new

That was still after the RAMpocolypse had started but hadn’t hit Apple yet, I remember thinking Apple was immune

[–] hypercube33 2 days ago
Crazy that in this market especially, Apple wouldnt release a Mac Mini Neo with the Neo boards and make it minier. Its enough of a machine to do most work including app dev and I've only run into memory problems after really pushing it and having a program that had some insane memory leaks. Note: I dont do photoshop or video editing, I'm sure its not awesome at those, even though it can do it.
[–] lp92 1 day ago
Why would they do that considering they are also RAM supply constrained as seen by the Neo price bump.
[–] girvo 2 days ago
I picked up an M4 16GB Mac Mini with a 1TB drive for ~$900 USD last year. Last train out of Saigon… though I wish I’d got more memory
[–] freedomben 2 days ago
Indeed, I was planning to buy this but the price is way too high. My biggest fear here is that the price causes the device sales to be poor, and people blame grapheneos for it
[–] grapheneos 2 days ago
They have their own OS with Google Mobile Services. They've made sure the device will meet all of our requirements and are helping us develop and maintain support for it. It's not the main OS for it.
[–] bjoli 2 days ago
Do you also happen to support the Motorola "shake to turn the flashlight on".

Every time I buy sometning that is not Motorola I regret it, and it is like 85% because of this feature. I don't know how they do it, but it triggers reliably, never misfires.

People always suggest apps that supposedly should allow the same thing, but they never work, which makes me think Motorola uses some lower level sensor access to do it.

[–] terribleperson 1 day ago
I've used a lot of smart phones over the years. They always, always, have a pile of supposedly useful, ergonomic, gestures or shakes or whatever that do stuff. I have never actually reliably started using them and stuck with them until my partner got a Motorola device.

Shake to flashlight is the perfect combination of easy to remember, easy to trigger, and actually useful. It should be industry standard.

[–] rickydroll 1 day ago
There are 2 features I missed when I went to Pixel phones from Motorola: shake on flashlight and twist on camera.

On a hike a few moons ago, as I approached a scenic overlook, another hiker pulled out their phone, twisted it, and took a picture. We had a brief conversation about our love for Motorola gestures.

If Motorola comes out with a lower priced phone with GrapheneOS and a Pixel quality camera or better, I'm there.

[–] annex-winged-cr 2 days ago
I'm a bit sad that it won't the default OS.

I was hoping that by being pre-installed, GrapheneOS's public image will slowly transition from being an "obscure OS that scary hackers go out of their way to install" into just yet another stock OS found on certain brands.

[–] tranq_cassowary 1 day ago
In the future, options with GrapheneOS preinstalled will be available according to statements made by official GrapheneOS social media accounts.
[–] newsy-combi 2 days ago
Which of the software features will GrapheneOS keep? Will the camera be a first class citizen? I can do without the AI stuff and the audio tuning, but will you keep them too?
[–] grapheneos 2 days ago
GrapheneOS isn't based on the stock OS of the devices it supports. It will be the same GrapheneOS on Motorola devices as it is on Pixels. It's only the firmware, drivers and other device support code which will be different. We'll gradually work on supporting all the hardware features. We plan to add support for installing and using Motorola's camera app similarly to how we support using Pixel Camera on Pixels.
[–] JumpCrisscross 2 days ago
> biggest fear here is that the price causes the device sales to be poor, and people blame grapheneos for it

I'm unconvinced there is a market for a premium GrapheneOS phone. It seems to do well in a niche where phones built for another OS get repurposed to it on the cheap.

[–] grapheneos 2 days ago
There will be cheaper Motorola devices with GrapheneOS support too. It's initially going to be limited to flagships due to Qualcomm not yet having MTE for a non-flagship SoC. A flagship SoC is easily more expensive than a lot of low-end phones. Pixels have a much easier time providing high security and long term updates for the budget 'a' series line because they have an in-house SoC used across their devices. Pixels also have no flagship SoC with competitive performance despite selling flagship devices using the same SoC as the lower end devices. It has drastically lower performance than a Snapdragon flagship to the point that the flagship Snapdragon will be an upgrade of ~60% to single threaded performance, ~80% to multithreaded and over 100% for GPU performance.
[–] ngl999 1 day ago
Just curious, how relevant is MTE when considered a security feature? IIRC, last time i checked there were reports about extracting tag values so that maybe the access control enforced by the tags can be bypassed.
[–] tranq_cassowary 1 day ago
MTE is very important because its a measure against an entire, very important class of vulnerabilities, memory safety vulnerabilities.

Generations of MTE improve over time. The implementation of MTE used on a Pixel 8 for example has certain side channels which arent present in the MTE used on an iPhone 17. That being said, it being imperfect doesn't make it irrelevant.

[–] ngl999 1 day ago
Thanks, good to know it's still improving
[–] kybernetikos 2 days ago
I'm part of the market for a premium phone that at least nods in the direction of allowing you freedom over your own device. I'm probably going to buy something from this batch of Motorola phones rather than a samsung which has got more and more user hostile over the years. And yes I might be part of a small niche, but I'm so pleased someone is finally making a premium phone that appeals to me.
[–] JumpCrisscross 2 days ago
> I'm so pleased someone is finally making a premium phone that appeals to me

I’m glad to hear this. And I hope it succeeds. The top comments all complaining about price may just be reinforcing my biases.

[–] palata 2 days ago
> And I hope it succeeds.

Me too! And that more Motorola phones will support GrapheneOS later, including cheaper ones.

My first impression from the comments here is: if the only thing people complain about is the price, I guess it's not too bad :-).

[–] matheusmoreira 2 days ago
Same here. I don't care about the price. I'm never going to buy a Samsung phone again.
[–] tranq_cassowary 1 day ago
There are certainly GrapheneOS users who would love to do as much of their digital activities as possible on their GrapheneOS device. When these features mature, this could mean heavy usage of Android desktop mode and pKVMs with Android, Linux or Windows guests. For such use case a highly performant device with high RAM and good CPU and GPU will be needed.
[–] AtHeartEngineer 2 days ago
I just want to buy a pretty good new phone that supports graphene, doesn't need to have 5 cameras, 2 is probably fine.
[–] phasephantasm 2 days ago
Would you rather these be a ultrawide and a wide, or a wide and a small (eg. 3x) telephoto? Pixel 4 series failed to do the latter but that was before 50 MP sensors where you get 2x digital zoom for free.
[–] AtHeartEngineer 2 days ago
maybe a bit on the wide side and a telephoto. I use both regularly, maybe more than "1x". I take pictures of rooms or inside of servers where I want to document a lot of general "what does this space look like", and I use zoom often just for reading things far away
[–] HybridStatAnim8 2 days ago
There is a market for a phone running GrapheneOS (that arent pixels) in general, and a wider range of devices can be supported in the future, once the needed hardware security features are implemented in them.
[–] solyin 2 days ago
Same. A lot of voices saying "I would totally buy..." and then an excuse comes up when it's time to actually buy. (no shade, I've been guilty of this myself)
[–] bpavuk 2 days ago
my sole excuse is price. I'd happily cough up anything below $1100 for this particular phone. anything above that is simply exorbitant. RAM went 5x over 2026, so I'm practically forced to not consider any hardware purchase at all, not even used, for now
[–] drnick1 2 days ago
It will probably go on sale soon close to your price point, as non-Apple phones typically do.
[–] microtonal 2 days ago
I'll wait a few months for prices to go down a little, but I'm excited to get one.
[–] JumpCrisscross 2 days ago
> my sole excuse is price

To be clear, I’m not criticizing anyone balking at a $1,600 phone. I’m expressing skepticism at marketing a GrapheneOS phone at that price point.

[–] HybridStatAnim8 2 days ago
Its not being marketed as a GrapheneOS phone. It is a Motorola phone that will come with MotorolaOS. It additionally meets the hardware security requirements for GrapheneOS, and can be flashed with it. There is a possibility preinstalled options will be available but nothing has been confirmed.
[–] sneak 2 days ago
I fail to see the logic in it being worth $1099 but not $2k.

If your max price point were $600 or something, sure, but once you’re above $1k what’s the difference? You already value it greatly.

[–] palata 2 days ago
So if you can pay 20k for a car, you may as well pay 100k, because you already want a car? I'm not sure I get the argument.

2k is two times 1k. There are many things that I would not buy for double the price.

[–] sneak 22 hours ago
He said the price being over his $1100 cap was what stopped him. It exceeded his cap by $499.

In your example where you were sold on a $20k car, would the car being $20,499 stop you from buying it?

[–] Zetaphor 2 days ago
Do you assume that beyond a certain threshold people just have infinite money?
[–] kakacik 2 days ago
Your sole excuse will disappear within few months, lets see how it works for your then
[–] bpavuk 1 day ago
well if I can finance it then it's alright. I strongly believe that this is a device for at least 10 years, so it's totally worth it
[–] tranq_cassowary 19 hours ago
Only 7 years of guaranteed updates.
[–] spankibalt 2 days ago
> A lot of voices saying "I would totally buy..." and then an excuse comes up when it's time to actually buy.

Yeah, well, to me flagship is a one-word descriptor for "overpriced and enshittified device for suckers". Just in this case, now that the OS seems to deliver, it's the hardware. If you don't offer 3.5 mm audio, active stylus, full-feature USB-C 3.x+, and a uSD slot with a good enough screen in a slab you can get lost. It's that simple.

[–] zrobotics 2 days ago
I mean, is there any phone left with a 3.5mm jack, SD card support, and decent specs?

Just those 2 alone disqualify a lot of the market. I'd like to have both, but I'm currently typing this on a pixel 9 with neither simply because the market isn't there for them.

[–] spankibalt 2 days ago
From 2025 onwards? Only Sony Xperia 1 VII/VIII or... the Ulefone Armor 28/29 Ultra. None of them have a stylus, none of them support GOS.

And Lenovo (Motorola)? For me, so far, nothing. Unless this or next year's successor to the Moto G Stylus 2025 model comes with a much better USB-C port (i. e. not just that cheap 2.0 garbage), runs on GOS, keeps the audio jack as well as the dedicated uSD slot, and improves the not-so-hot stylus.

[–] JCattheATM 2 days ago
It's definitely kind of weird, especially since so many users on HN have disposable incomes and are the types who genuinely believe they need a new macbook every year to keep up with web design.
[–] port11 2 days ago
Some us stay at home to raise our kids. Or have been layed off. Or are in lower-paid jobs. Or…
[–] JCattheATM 1 day ago
I'm not talking about people that can't afford it, but people that could easily afford it and still poopoo it while spending their money on objectively sillier things. Like a new Macbook every year.
[–] selectodude 2 days ago
I don’t think anybody will blame GrapheneOS, it’s not even installed by default. Motorola will absolutely see that GrapheneOS support is not a value add and will decide against spending whatever nominal value it cost them to have first class support for it though.
[–] grapheneos 2 days ago
Motorola has seen that there's immense interest in GrapheneOS and is very interested in expanding it to more devices. They want to have cheaper devices with it and the blocker for that isn't at all Motorola but rather Qualcomm not providing MTE support for lower end SoC variants yet.

People will be able to install GrapheneOS on supported devices themselves but it hasn't been stated that it will be the only option. There will be further announcements about support for it.

[–] matheusmoreira 2 days ago
I'm really happy to read this. I am going to buy their phone specifically to run GrapheneOS! No idea how many of us there are but it's probably not nothing.

You guys are going to reach a much wider audience now. Google doesn't sell Pixels worldwide but Motorola does.

[–] selectodude 2 days ago
I really hope that interest turns into sales. I’ve just seen this movie a few times before.
[–] HybridStatAnim8 2 days ago
The partnership between Motorola and GrapheneOS is a long term one. The effort that is put into providing the needed hardware security requirements also benefits Motorola directly, as they can use that hardware themselves. What you are predicting will happen is not corroborated by evidence.
[–] selectodude 2 days ago
Motorola is porting GOS to the device. They can just decide not to bother anymore. There’s no evidence to speak of, the partnership is 9 months old.
[–] grapheneos 2 days ago
Motorola has directly seen the immense interest in GrapheneOS from both individuals and businesses. This post is an example of how it greatly increases in the interest in their devices. They're aware not everyone is going to buy a high end flagship and want to have cheaper devices with it.
[–] palata 2 days ago
Data point: I had never, ever considered buying a Motorola phone, until now :-). I did not even know that Motorola was a Lenovo company before, and I have been very happy with Thinkpad laptops for decades.

GrapheneOS literally puts Motorola on the map for me.

[–] ssl-3 2 days ago
Motorola split itself up ~15 years ago, and the bits that dealt with consumer cell phones became Motorola Mobility. The rest became Motorola Solutions.

Motorola Mobility was sold to Google in 2012 for ~$12bn, and then in 2014 to Lenovo for ~$3bn.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola#Split_of_Motorola

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Solutions

[–] johnsea 2 days ago
> Motorola has directly seen the immense interest in GrapheneOS from both individuals and businesses.

No wonder if I see the "crap" my collegues have to endure with their Samsung phones in comparison to my rather quiet GrapheneOS phone. It has security and cost/time consequences. They could configure their phones better but don't care (due to insecurity what could break & complexity).

[–] Brybry 2 days ago
It's expensive but also a similar price to other flagship phone models.

Pixel 11 Pro Fold is MSRP $1900+

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 MSRP is $1900+ ($2100 for 512GB storage)

Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra 512GB MSRP $1600 (and this was before a lot of hardware price increases, I imagine the Galaxy S27 will be more expensive)

iPhone 18 Pro Max 512GB $1500 on Apple Store

As memory and storage chips get more expensive, phones will continue to get more expensive. Even Qualcomm SoCs have seen significant price hikes. [1]

[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/qualcomm-t...

[–] Hello71 2 days ago
> Pixel 11 Pro Fold > Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8

is motorola's phone folding?

[–] Brybry 2 days ago
No, it's not folding.

There's not a lot of flagship phones that released recently which is why I included them alongside phones that do not fold but were released a bit earlier.

I think the most fair comparison will probably be the Galaxy S27 when it releases in early 2027.

[–] Kirby64 2 days ago
Folding commands an immense premium. Not really fair to compare folding phones, given the premium associated with those. 512GB storage phones sure… although the fact they don’t even offer a 256GB option seems odd to me. Clearly gaining margin back by only selling 512 and marking it up based on that.
[–] hypercube33 2 days ago
Its worth noting that the Pixel 11 was considered a downgrade - the CPU has features removed that may make it harder to run things in the future (GrapheneOS included)
[–] gf000 2 days ago
iphone 18 pro max is also non-folding
[–] glenstein 2 days ago
As some who also just so happens to have a Pixel 8 (well 8a) 2nd hand phone with Graphene I think an underappreciated point here is access to older hardware with current software. Whether intended or not, a second life for hardware is another way GrapheneOS insulates from control of first party vendors.
[–] grapheneos 2 days ago
Pixel 8 and later have 7 years of support from launch and so does the Motorola Signature 27. It isn't GrapheneOS extending the life of the devices but rather GrapheneOS only using devices with long term security updates. We do greatly improve the security updates during the lifetime of the device but it stops being safe to use devices without firmware updates after end-of-life. Official GrapheneOS releases are for devices which aren't end-of-life. We provide extended support releases for devices past end-of-life as harm reduction, but we don't do it indefinitely. We've found providing extended support releases can be quite counterproductive since people won't listen to us and will continue using or even buying the devices despite growing insecurity. It's going to be a lot worse now with AI models able to help anyone develop exploits.
[–] mixtureoftakes 2 days ago
Hey just curious, to what extent you using ai to help with proactive exploit discovery?
[–] grapheneos 2 days ago
We use frontier AI models to review all our code but it hasn't replaced human review and humans need to review the output from it. It adds significantly more work and has resulted in a lot of issues being fixed.

We're not currently putting a large amount of resources into finding Linux, AOSP or Chromium vulnerabilities this way because many others are doing it with far more resources including Google. There are much higher impact things for us to focus on instead. Our focus remains systemic privacy and security improvement rather than case-by-case fixing of bugs. We definitely do that much better through shipping Linux and Android patches much faster than the Pixel OS along with fixing many issues ourselves but it's not our priority for the most part. Certain parts of it are priorities such as finding and fixing VPN leaks because Google doesn't consider it to be a relevant security issue.

[–] charcircuit 2 days ago
GrapheneOS limits their support length to the original device so that it's always possible for new security updates to be available.
[–] e12e 2 days ago
Pixel 10a going for 4 000 nok new atm - including 25% vat. ~430 USD

Been considering getting a couple just to test/use with Graphene...

[–] grapheneos 2 days ago
A used Pixel 8a is a great option for trying GrapheneOS. It's still one of the recommended devices with over 4.5 years out of the original 7 years of support remaining.
[–] 3abiton 2 days ago
> Well "starting MSRP of $1,599."

Honestly I was looking lately for some deals for black friday or 11.11, and I saw that the Oppo Ultra 9X or whatever it's called, had a rom and a bootloader cve that would allow you to root it and replace god awful COS with someone AOSP based. The 12/256 is 1200€! And that's the chinese version. A phone with a last gen chip! Absolutely crazy. The ram prices are way worse than I thought.

[–] b112 2 days ago
Whenever a scarcity happens, manufacturers take the opportunity to tack on some extra profit. Likely the extra cost is mostly extra profit, not RAM all on its own.
[–] kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 2 days ago
Yes, it's a well-known fact that manufacturers will sacrifice all the goodwill they've accumulated over the years for a little short term profit. /s

I'm not saying none of them do, but you've made a heckuva blanket statement there with zero citation.

[–] b112 2 days ago
It's literally every manufacturer of everything ever. Not just now, not just this century or this planet, or even this galaxy. From amoeba loaning glucose to a neighbour, to a star granting energy to its flock, the universal truth is the cost is what you'll pay, not what it costs to make.

If you set your pricing by what it costs you to make, you're not very good at capitalism.

Prices also skyrocket relatively fast, and come down much slower, for the same reason.

[–] Dylan16807 2 days ago
Nobody said they sacrificed any goodwill. The scarcity provides cover.
[–] 71bw 2 days ago
>I don’t see where I would actually need that.

In battery life and thermal performance alone, where Google seems to have conveniently ignored valid criticisms since the Pixel 6 series.

[–] anal_reactor 2 days ago
This critique makes zero sense.

1. Most companies release their most expensive models first, and then follow up with cheaper ones. Like, that's business 101. Nvidia does it, Lego does it.

2. You're comparing a new flagship to a three-year old phone, bought second-hand. Like, those two serve completely different markets.

[–] weystrom 2 days ago
I'll pay any money to get off Pixel hardware, the most exiting thing about this announcement is GrapheneOS on Qualcomm - a much more mature platform.
[–] pjmlp 2 days ago
Yeah, 500 euros is my hard limit for phone, additionally I am not buying one on credit or two year bondage contracts.
[–] droserasprout 1 day ago
Dunno why it's getting downvoted. If the main goal is first-class GrapheneOS support and decent hardware, with 500 EUR you can buy a new or refurbished Pixel 8+ today to serve for many years.
[–] thatsabadlook 2 days ago
I hope their cheaper phones degoogle as well.
[–] hcal 2 days ago
Depending on where you live, fairphone is a degoogled option. It is not Graphene, but its pretty decent hardware and software. It isnt overly costly.

Im running linux/phosh on my 6+ now, but i playes with both the default os and the supported e/os systems on it too. All were good

[–] tranq_cassowary 1 day ago
It doesn't properly keep up with Android updates (both Fairphone OS and /e/OS) and lacks a good secure element and other hardware security features

/e/OS degrades security compared to AOSP, bundles privileged MicroG which makes connection to Google by default etc.

Linux/Phosh is based on a traditional Linux desktop OS which lacks system wide mandatory access control and an obligatory enforced app sandbox with a fine grained runtime permission model. Lots of its user space is using tech stacks written in memory unsafe code with much less exploit mitigations than modern Android.

It's not the same category of hardware and software.

[–] blackfawn 2 days ago
Yeah, this is definitely a "yikes!" price. I was thoroughly disappointed in the Pixel 11 and hopeful for this new Motorola, but not at this price! I've been looking for some used older-gen Pixels that still support GrapheneOS, but I've yet to find any close to 1/10th the MSRP...
[–] Number-Six 2 days ago
GOS with Pixel 7a here, same thoughs...
[–] t0bia_s 2 days ago
Users of GOS probably does not need bunch od RAM and CPU cores anyway. I guess there are not many of those who use OS for privacy and in same time use privacy invasive apps with fancy AI stuffs, bloatware and spyware built in that consumes most of HW resources.
[–] tranq_cassowary 1 day ago
People highly valuing their privacy and security are likely to desire wanting to do as much of their digital stuff as possible on their GrapheneOS device. Android desktop mode is maturing and Google is putting further resources into making the Android Virtualization Framework more well-featured. The latter would allow people to run Android guests and legacy desktop guests like desktop Linux distros and Windows. These use cases require high RAM, a good CPU and a good GPU with hardware acceleration. Of course not everyone falls into this category.