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points by JumpCrisscross 2 days ago | 0 comments

> 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.