I don't think GrapheneOS team would partner with a vendor unless their security/usability standards were met (considering how long it took since the initial announcement) so I'm expecting feature parity with Pixel variants.
I'm just really curious if this phone is going to pass Google's conformance tests and whatnot. I feel like some of that is incompatible with GrapheneOS's security model, so I wonder what's going to happen there.
GrapheneOS is finally decoupling itself from Google Pixel phones. This is great news. Motorola makes great hardware too. Looking forward to see what comes out of this.
What's interesting about this announcement is that it implies actual cooperation instead of GrapheneOS having to reverse-engineer and work around OEM limitations. If Motorola is willing to provide proper hardware support, documentation, and not cripple things like verified boot or alternative OS installation, that's a completely different dynamic
Looks like GrapheneOS was promised firmware access:
> Aside from that, we'll have a lot more access to the code for firmware, etc. and ability to do hardening below the OS layer through the partnership with Motorola and their partnership with Qualcomm.
Do they really still design their own hardware? I was under the impression that the Moto series and more was designed by a Chinese OEM, since Motorola Mobility is owned by Lenovo (China).
Yep, this is my biggest takeaway from this. I've been Graphene only since 2020 to the point where I've scarcely considered any hardware outside its support range (which has effectively meant I've only kept up with Pixels).
Do they? I genuinely don’t know because I don’t think I have ever seen a Motorola smartphone in the wild and their heavy involvement with the police and surveillance state has my attention piqued a bit. I’m just saying GrapheneOS partnering with possibly the biggest police state surveillance solutions provider? What’s that all about?
Are you confusing Motorola Mobility with Motorola Solutions? The article is about Motorola Mobility, which makes cell phones. Motorola Solutions makes two-way radios and surveillance systems. They split in 2011.
Yes, thank you. I was not aware of that. The impression I had was that they were divisions or business units of the same corporate entity. That being said though, even though some are concerned about the Chinese connection of Motorola Mobility, I would have far more concern about Motorola Solutions being the partner considering that "the Chinese surveillance state" is far more remote than the tyrannical impulses of our domestic governments sitting on our necks.
That's not the one. and of course they do and I'm super happy to hear about that partnership. I highly recommend checking them out!
A year ago I got a "10 month old flagship" Moto, after research. For half the price of top Samsung that was available locally at the moment in stores, I got:
- Worse, but still really great CPU (Snapdragon 8s gen3 instead of "non-s" for Samsung)
- faster storage (UFS 4.0)
- more RAM (16GB LPDDR5x)
- much better charging (125W with... equally that strong charger in the box, 50W wireless, 10W reverse)
- much more storage (1TB)
- in a very slim wooden-back case :O
It also has great optically stabilized camera (with some challenges when it comes to "shutter speed" - it does a lot of processing so your photos are sometimes timed awkwardly), amazing low light for main camera, but that's a rabbit hole I don't want to go into.
Software-wise it was not as good as the fame goes, but still very good. I do have all the newest upgrades (currently Android 16 with Feb sec update) but it was not as "vanilla" as people claim. Still better than most things around and in the end I was able to trivially remove everything I don't like (which persisted across updates). With exception of their weird Dolby app that is useless anyway. This partnership with GrapheneOS makes me think they are still serious about clean OS.
The phone also has VERY GOOD support for external screens. I'm really impressed by that, I don't see any real drawbacks compared to Samsung's Dex here. Motorola should really invest into promoting that more, but I'm confused with some newer phones lacking screen support (make sure to double check!). And by good I mean good: on that phone I was able to play Diablo mobile on full external screen with wireless gamepad, while texting on the phone, with no hiccups and hardware reporting temps around 40-42 Celsius.
Exactly the catch I mentioned. This should be present by default on any model, especially that under the brand of Lenovo (also partialy by Motorola, as I understand) they sell ~250 phones meant for business while specifically targeting that functionality (with matching monitors, I think they can do some sort of monitor buil-in webcam sharing, even).
Several phones downgraded in this regard, even going to usb2.0, like Fairphone :/
Yeah... and it's still a great cpu. What are consequences to the user? I failed to find a use case where it makes a sweat. It's insanely good price to value ratio.
Once again: are there any known problems that are not theoretical? I'm having 1,5 days+ with screen on time that I feel ashamed to admit, plus as I wrote before, never had it overheat despite gaming on external devices etc.
The Motorola phones are generally good performers and value for money. My only gripe is that they cannot have their batteries replaced easily - even by phone repair shops.
I understand that this is because you have to disassemble / un-glue the phones through the front and remove the display. For this reason, the repair shops I have asked have said they don't 'do' Motorola phones because there's too much risk in breaking the display.
This effectively means that the life of the phone is determined by the ageing of the battery.
That's a disappointing change. I had a Moto G Play a few years ago (the one where you could swap different modules on the back, like a projector and things), and its battery was really easy to replace.
Netherlands. The only people I know with a Motorola phone are from overseas (either living overseas or moved here). Definitely more known in the anglosphere than in the Netherlands, but they're in stores and being sold, just not as strong a brand. Probably most people wouldn't know it, similar with e.g. Oppo
When selecting a new phone, I always just put in the specs I want and then consider all options, so I have been aware that they're selling here but so far they never made the cut for me. I think the issue is usually that they're made for giants, or it's one of these screen curved edge devices that you can't pick up without touching something on the screen side
Also Netherlands: I've seen quite a few Motorolas. Not their high-end phones, though, mostly mid-range phones. They don't seem to do a lot of advertising and don't have free watches/earbuds/accessories to give away with their phones so they don't create a lot of hype on the high-end market.
My experience is that they provide decent hardware with clean software that doesn't get updates as often as you would hope. Most end users don't really seem to be all that interested in updates, though. They may not always be the fastest phones, but if they work for you, they will for years.
The niche that draws me the most is the cheap segment. Now that we're moving towards a society where all sorts of vendors (including government) require code execution on a device with remote attestation of DRM (or attempts thereto), having a nonfree/untrusted secondary device for 200€ with decent hardware and EU-mandated updates is pretty doable
> don't have free watches/earbuds/accessories to give away with their phones so they don't create a lot of hype
The times vendors shipped free e-waste are long gone in my experience. I don't think anyone selects a 400€ phone based on getting 15€ earphones with it, if you can even find one that still does this
I've had a Motorola smartphone for four years before moving on to a Pixel with GrapheneOS and was mostly satisfied with it, so this announcement sounds rather good to me. Can't wait for the product(s)!
I bought a Motorola phone (G Stylus 2025) while in the US after discovering my brand new Sony Xperia VII phone would not work in upstate NY.
It's a great device, I loved using it. It had features I specifically wanted (still has a 3.5mm jack, a microSD slot, and wireless charging). It also looks fantastic with their Pantone colours, and it feels more comfortable than my Xperia VII. There's a wired fast charge feature that is incredibly fast. The Motorola was just 25% of the price and it's as good as the Sony in almost every way.
I do remember one flaw, the compass (ie direction pointing in Google Maps) was terrible. I'd sometimes walk a block using Google Maps before finding the compass was leading me in the wrong direction. But GPS seemed fine, and data reception was sometimes better than my friend's iPhone in the same places. The selfie camera was excellent, though something about the rear camera I wasn't quite as happy about. The Stylus is nice to have, but honestly I don't use it as much as I thought I would.
I wish there were more Motorola phones in Australia, I've probably become a Motorola / Lenovo customer now. (I already use a Lenovo ThinkPad).
For reference, my previous phones have been iPhone, Google, Samsung, Sony, now Motorola.
Motorola omitted a magnetometer in some of their models. This was especially heinous as the "compass needle" can be emulated to some degree by fusion if gps and rotation/acceleration sensors, so the user wouldn't immediately notice the total lack of a compass.
Since then I am always wary of what seemingly essential part of a phone they will omit this time...
Direction pointing seems to be pretty bad in any built up area (on my iPhone and my wife’s Pixel). I suspect that they are relying on accurate GPS for it combined with the magnetic compass. Both of which are a bit hit and miss when you are surrounded by tall steel framed buildings.
You're mixing up 2 different companies descended from the original Motorola. Motorola Solutions is an entirely different company from Motorola Mobility with different owners. GrapheneOS is working with the company owned by Lenovo.
Ironic given that Lenovo is forced to comply with orders on the same level, of the same kind, as companies like Huawei and ZTE to name a few. With GOS' emphasis on security and privacy, is this not a concern at all? Or do you feel that between Lenovo and arseholes like Google, the feasible options are a case of choosing between plague or cholera?
Valid concerns. I must point out though, that if we are worried about hardware backdoors, then Zhengzhou, "the iPhone City", is also in China, even if Apple is in the US.
When it comes to telecom products I'm less worried, though not entirely content, with products that are developed in the West and manufactured in China, than products developed by the Chinese.
I still have 2 Motorola phones here. One > 12y old and one even older. The > 12y old one can still be used for calls and maps and so on, is just a bit slow these days. The even older one would be painfully slow and probably only able to use 1 or 2 apps at a time, but I am using it as a music player. Both phones still just work. Based on this Motorola seems to have made great phone hardware.
I was pretty happy with the Moto G7 Plus I bought a few years back; bought it specifically on the basis of “my OnePlus 5T broke and I need a LineageOS-compatible phone immediately”, and it ended up fitting the bill perfectly. My only complaint was the smooth finish on the backplate, so it had a nasty tendency to slide off of any slightly-angled surface.
I remember when they were briefly owned by Google (I think) and assembled the MotoX in the US so you could buy a bamboo or customized case. It had one of the first low power always listening CPUs to listen for you to say Ok Google. Once that didn't work out Lenovo bought them and they had decent but not many flagship midrange phones. Moving forward a phone with decent security running grapheneOS that isn't a Pixel sounds good especially considering how other manufacturers such as OnePlus are embracing AI integrations. I think a number of people get sold on Apple devices based on their purported security so this collab could bolster some sales, let's hope they make it work and keep it open. I'd buy another one especially if I could get a bamboo case.
Before the iphone came and all the android uniformity, i used to use motorolla phones a lot and they were excellent. If the quality is still the same, with GrapheneOS they are going to have an excellent product.
Maybe have an onion web service and add direct Monero payment support. This will help privacy LARP'ers get into the mood. Truth be told, if you're paranoid by any measure and use a cell phone -> YNGMI. It's not cheap enough for average person to care and not private enough for ulta-paranoid to pay and use. The whole mobile infrastructure is utterly broken in terms of security and privacy so it's still refreshing to see any kind of attempt being made in this area.
Tech giant blames ‘user error, not AI error’ for incident in December involving its Kiro tool
Amazon’s cloud unit has suffered at least two outages due to errors involving its own AI tools, leading some employees to raise doubts about the US tech giant’s push to roll out these coding assistants.
Amazon Web Services experienced a 13-hour interruption to one system used by its customers in mid-December after engineers allowed its Kiro AI coding tool to make certain changes, according to four people familiar with the matter.
The people said the agentic tool, which can take autonomous actions on behalf of users, determined that the best course of action was to “delete and recreate the environment”.
Amazon posted an internal postmortem about the “outage” of the AWS system, which lets customers explore the costs of its services.
Multiple Amazon employees told the FT that this was the second occasion in recent months in which one of the group’s AI tools had been at the centre of a service disruption.
“We’ve already seen at least two production outages [in the past few months],” said one senior AWS employee. “The engineers let the AI [agent] resolve an issue without intervention. The outages were small but entirely foreseeable.”
AWS, which accounts for 60 per cent of Amazon’s operating profits, is seeking to build and deploy AI tools including “agents” capable of taking actions independently based on human instructions.
Like many Big Tech companies, it is seeking to sell this technology to outside customers. The incidents highlight the risk that these nascent AI tools can misbehave and cause disruptions.
Amazon said it was a “coincidence that AI tools were involved” and that “the same issue could occur with any developer tool or manual action”.
“In both instances, this was user error, not AI error,” Amazon said, adding that it had not seen evidence that mistakes were more common with AI tools.
The company said the incident in December was an “extremely limited event” affecting only a single service in parts of mainland China. Amazon added that the second incident did not have an impact on a “customer facing AWS service”.
Neither disruption was anywhere near as severe as a 15-hour AWS outage in October 2025 that forced multiple customers’ apps and websites offline — including OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
Employees said the group’s AI tools were treated as an extension of an operator and given the same permissions. In these two cases, the engineers involved did not require a second person’s approval before making changes, as would normally be the case.
Amazon said that by default its Kiro tool “requests authorisation before taking any action” but said the engineer involved in the December incident had “broader permissions than expected — a user access control issue, not an AI autonomy issue”.
AWS launched Kiro in July. It said the coding assistant would advance beyond “vibe coding” — which allows users to quickly build applications — to instead write code based on a set of specifications.
The group had earlier relied on its Amazon Q Developer product, an AI-enabled chatbot, to help engineers write code. This was involved in the earlier outage, three of the employees said.
Some Amazon employees said they were still sceptical of AI tools’ utility for the bulk of their work given the risk of error. They added that the company had set a target for 80 per cent of developers to use AI for coding tasks at least once a week and was closely tracking adoption.
Amazon said it was experiencing strong customer growth for Kiro and that it wanted customers and employees to benefit from efficiency gains.
“Following the December incident, AWS implemented numerous safeguards”, including mandatory peer review and staff training, Amazon added.
In Thailand, regular smoking is shunned by the public but vapes are literally everywhere.
I've even seen 15-16 year old boys in Thailand pick up their girlfriends on motorbikes, race their friends to the food court, drink a couple of beers and vape once they get there, then ride their girlfriends home again while still under the influence, all without helmets mind you.
If you have a very specific product with limited scope, a micro-framework would work just fine. My experience in the real world™ is as such: people start with micro-frameworks and keep bolting on stuff to the point where it would have been better if they started with a macro-framework in the first place. At least there is better compatibility between framework components and a clear upgrade process. I agree with the "makeshift framework" terminology by the way. One way or another, my experience is that products that start with micro-frameworks, over time turn into a "makeshift framework" over time regardless. If the scope is clear and limited from the start, micro-frameworks are great. If unsure, micro-framework is a no go (for me).
My experience in the real world is that the majority of people choose the largest "macro" framework available and go with that. It's what happens most often.
The "micro framework" phase happens when that "macro" framework fails to deliver something. It happens way less often than a team picking a big estabilished tool.
However, the sizes never mattered. That is likely what causes the confusion in the first place ("it's large so it must have lots of things I want", "it's small so it must be easy to understand").
The real red herring is focusing on the size (or LOC, or any vague metric) instead of other more relevant architectural properties.
This is why I use Ruby on Rails. Shared constraints and boring conventions age better than clever mini-frameworks built around one team's mental model.
reply