alt.hn

8/22/2026 at 1:02:09 AM

Initial focus for our partnership with Motorola is a regular non-folding device

 https://grapheneos.social/@GrapheneOS/117136278553665985

by Cider9986

8/22/2026 at 4:28:49 AM

A non-folder with a stylus option, an audio jack, microSD card slot and USB-C 3.2+ would be swell. In other words... a beefed-up update of the 2026 Motorola Moto G Stylus [1]. ;)

1. [https://www.gsmarena.com/motorola_moto_g_stylus_(2026)-14581...]

by spankibalt

8/22/2026 at 5:36:03 AM

I was planning to make my next phone a Moto G Stylus. If they do a Graphene one, it'll be certain.

My partner got the Moto G Stylus 2025 after we swore off Samsung last year. I've been very impressed. Other then the camera software, it's a very capable phone, and the headphone port and SD card slot are great. There's 90 gigabytes of lossless music on an SD card now. The camera software sucks, but thanks to a tip I think I heard here on HN, I installed a gcam (Google pixel camera) port and that's great.

by terribleperson

8/22/2026 at 8:11:04 AM

> My partner got the Moto G Stylus 2025 after we swore off Samsung last year.

I've been wanting to get away from Samsung for years, but keep coming back because of the s-pen. I've yet to find another manufacturer that makes a decent phone with a proper stylus. As in, a stylus which the device recognises as being something different to your finger. Most styluses use the same technology as the cheap ones you can buy on Amazon and use on any phone: all they do is imitate the finger. As far as I know, the Moto stylus phones are like that, right? That makes them very awkward to use for many things e.g.:

S-pen -> scroll down a PDF with my finger -> highlight with the pen

Regular stylus -> scroll down a PDF with my finger -> select highlight option in app -> highlight with stylus, being very careful not to touch the screen anywhere with my finger -> select browse option in app

With the latter, you have to specifically tell the app every time you are switching to/from finger and stylus. With the former, the app knows the difference.

If you give me a high end phone with a proper stylus and GrapheneOS, I'd probably never look back.

by jbstack

8/23/2026 at 6:52:51 AM

Yeah I've been wondering about this in regards to the honor magic stylus. If it can do real palm rejection. Do you have experience with this one perhaps? Since you mention you saw some other manufacturers.

by wolvoleo

8/22/2026 at 9:51:30 AM

I have the 2023 5G Stylus and it's great, has almost everything I want in a phone. It's now even supported by LineageOS though I haven't switched over. Something like it with Graphene would be fantastic.

by throwaway81523

8/22/2026 at 7:44:18 AM

How good is the microphone quality on it? I had a horrible experience with their Moto Edge Pro which had one of the worst mics I ever experienced. Very high noise floor plus aggressive filtering. Not something you expect in a flagship phone. I exchanged it twice thinking there was something wrong with the device but it was not the case, others were complaining about it and other Edge models as well.

It was a shame, as the rest of the phone hardware was very good for the price - after installing gcam on it as you did.

by ulnarkressty

8/22/2026 at 9:13:16 AM

You.know, this is very funny to me. Back in the early 90s, when mobile moved from analog to digital, I bought the first Motorola digital flip phone. And it regarded my voice as "noise" over a certain level, which (as I have a loud voice), meant it was clipping all the time.

I engaged Motorola on this, spoke with the engineering team. We even did a few calls, me with a Nokia and then a Motorola so they could see the difference. You could sense the shoulder shrugs at their end.

To discover they still have the same limitations is beyond amusing, and I wonder of the same engineering team still exists in part, decades later, refusing to care.

by b112

8/22/2026 at 10:06:15 AM

I'm sure this isn't actually what happened, but when you said "as I have a loud voice" and then "did a few calls" and finally "shoulder shrugs at their end", I imagine you shouting over the phone to them, and them not understanding why your are shouting instead of just talking :P I'm sure it wasn't like that though, just what popped into my head.

Maybe this isn't any of my businesses, but couldn't you just talk less loudly, if this is such a issue? Most microphones are good enough, and were in the 90s too, to pick up normal conversational volume :)

by embedding-shape

8/22/2026 at 5:32:52 PM

I just spoke normally.

Some people have louder voices. I'm not going to whisper all the time on the phone. And all other devices?

Fine.

by b112

8/22/2026 at 6:00:59 PM

I mean when I talk "normally" people think I talk too fast, so to make it easier for others to understand me, I talk "slower" which for them sounds "normal". Again, I'm not saying you have to change or anything, but isn't this more or less the same as for people who are "louder" or simply stronger too, they have to be more careful with others? I remember the moment the strong kid in class realized he was strong (as the teacher told him with not so nice words), and he adjusted based on that later when we played.

by embedding-shape

8/22/2026 at 6:54:48 PM

No.

Good grief, were you on the design team? I've owned 40 other phones in my life, by at least 10 brands. I've owned tablets, landlines, recording equipment, all fine!

Then wisenhimer shows up to defend the outlier.

No. Got it?

by b112

8/22/2026 at 7:21:10 PM

Sorry, I'm not claiming the phone isn't broken or shit, I wasn't even talking about the phone anymore. I don't understand the second to last sentence at all either, sorry. Hope you'll have a nice day anyways!

by embedding-shape

8/22/2026 at 4:01:43 PM

I haven't noticed any issues but, well, we don't make very many calls or record voice a lot. I may make a point to test it out.

by terribleperson

8/22/2026 at 4:45:52 AM

Would be nice, although the thread makes it look unlikely for now; they say the flagship processors have security features they require. I've got a 2023 stylus 5G... Never use the stylus, but it was the most reasonable phone with a headphone jack, enough ram, and a qualcomm cpu. Of course, the three year update period from release ended in June, so I've got to find something new soon to stay updated. :(

by toast0

8/22/2026 at 4:58:03 AM

Yeah... I still hope Motorola might add an "Ultra"-tier Moto G Stylus to their portfolio with more RAM, better CPU and all the other mentioned features. The stylus for me is not just a convenience; it's extremely handy for a lot of tasks in SaSec (safety and security), e. g. on-site annotation of accident/crime scene pics or floor plans (say placement of fire safety sensors, et cetera).

by spankibalt

8/22/2026 at 9:07:08 AM

Or a folder with a stylus. I'd like that even better.

by vdbijl

8/22/2026 at 4:49:03 AM

Not having big rounded corners would be nice and practical.

by dekdrop

8/22/2026 at 5:28:37 AM

Looking forward to the years we we start having some usb4. Or usb4 v2, why not, full 120gbit please.

by jauntywundrkind

8/22/2026 at 4:42:40 AM

[dead]

by balaa

8/22/2026 at 2:00:02 AM

This is a relief to hear.

Also this is great unless Motorola is comprimised.

    Motorola is doing a large portion of the work of porting GrapheneOS to their devices. They'll provide us with what we need for firmware/drivers in the form we need it and it will be far easier than Pixels. We'll be able to get issues in the firmware and drivers fixed through Motorola and Qualcomm.

by noman-land

8/22/2026 at 5:19:15 AM

Qualcomm makes a good SoC, but the low effort software stack from ODMs do not showcase most differentiating capabilities. This might be net positive for Qualcomm. However, they will for sure fail to recognise that may just start a litigation against graphene OS.

by bip-bop-robot

8/22/2026 at 3:32:22 AM

For me the reason why this is a big deal is because, before there was any Motorola upcoming Graphene-compatible model, most people that might be installing Graphene would not trust Google with their phone software, to then go ahead and install Graphene in Google's hardware! A bit of a contradiction there.

by siwatanejo

8/22/2026 at 6:11:09 AM

I think the feature we all want in light of this is a simple backup+restore which uses a users SSHD server somewhere so you can wipe completely before travelling and then restore completely when safe again.

Would obviously want it to also backup/restore esim's...

by purpleidea

8/22/2026 at 8:16:39 AM

Actually the main thing I want is to be able to use my phone however I like, and install whatever I want, without Google telling me whether I have their permission to do so or not.

by jbstack

8/22/2026 at 6:25:23 AM

I'll take a complicated backup+restore. I haven't been able to back up my apps since I had a Nexus.

by Dylan16807

8/22/2026 at 4:48:32 PM

I think that is hard to do securely - wiping the phone implies wiping the keys from secure storage, and those cannot be restored by design.

by ulrikrasmussen

8/23/2026 at 9:56:57 AM

Then perhaps this entire security model is less useful for normal people who have to exist in the world than it is for secret agents in movies. If you're carrying around the nuclear secrets on your phone then being able to irrecoverably lock it with a simple button combo when the enemies are about to capture you is great! No matter how many of your limbs they cut off you'll never be able to give up the secrets!

In the real world, though, the biggest threat is governments and the biggest interactions with them are planned ones at border security and they're perfectly happy to imprison you if you don't behave in the way they want, so it would really be nice to be able to smoothly and frictionlessly plan ahead for these foreseeable interactions by replacing sensitive data on the phone with uninteresting data that can be fully exposed when you're forced to unlock it, while being able to restore the real data later.

by amenhotep

8/23/2026 at 10:42:40 AM

No it isn't, this is also the security model that prevents those same agents from cloning your phone before giving it back to get access to all services you are logged in to, including any SSH keys or government identity apps you may have installed.

by ulrikrasmussen

8/24/2026 at 5:29:38 AM

In case you haven't heard, the government is cloning everyone's phones. In theory our hardware and software would protect us, but in practice the phone companies keep it proprietary enough and with enough backdoors and bug doors that Celebrite and similar products can clone almost anything.

And cold boot attacks are basically unstoppable and easy to achieve these days too.

by purpleidea

8/22/2026 at 3:02:44 AM

The question is whether the new gen Snapdragon Elite SoCs will finally support non-protected KVM? That would make native "linux terminal" (which has GUI support) work.. so far Qualcomm is the only flagship vendor that doesn't support it. And this feature currently works with pixels, hopefully it doesn't stop working with Motorola Signature.

by zb3

8/22/2026 at 4:11:35 AM

This is not the Motorola (USA) that many of us knew for ages. That company doesn't exist any more.

The company working with GrapheneOS appears to be Motorola Mobility, owned by Lenovo (China).

by foresto

8/22/2026 at 10:08:53 AM

> Motorola Mobility, owned by Lenovo (China).

Praise be the lord for Chinese Motorola Mobility if so, because they were the ones who launched and shipped the Motorola Moto G phone which was probably the best cheap Android phone available that could fit into my hand properly, until the 5th/6th generation, when I had to move away from them as they too became too large.

Hope they go back to their (Chinese) roots shortly and launch more "normal sized" phones again, if they'll be able to run GrapheneOS as well that'd be a huge plus obviously :)

by embedding-shape

8/22/2026 at 11:12:21 AM

The first three generations of the Moto G were developed under the US branch of Motorola Mobility, when they were owned by Google.

That "growing too large to be useful" was exactly when they were sold to Lenovo.

by kuschku

8/22/2026 at 5:07:20 AM

The original Motorola exists as Motorola Solutions in USA. Mobility was spun-off.

by abhinavk

8/22/2026 at 8:27:31 AM

I got my first smartphone 14 years ago. It was a Samsung. It landed in trash after one year. Since then I've been on Motorolas because they're the only smartphones that tick these boxes:

- SD card slot

- audio jack

- cheap

- no shitty custom UI filled with ads and slowness

by anal_reactor

8/22/2026 at 6:59:51 AM

Well thankfully, because the original one was hopeless in shipping good mobile phones

by raverbashing

8/22/2026 at 4:06:40 AM

I hope they try to bring Graphene OS to Motorola's mid-range devices, like the Moto G.

by terribleperson

8/22/2026 at 5:51:00 AM

But how are they going stuff them chokeful of intrusive bloatware then?

by notabotiswear

8/22/2026 at 2:22:57 AM

This is great, I'll hopefully get one as my next phone when my Pixel 7 Pro dies.

by hankbond

8/22/2026 at 5:09:59 AM

Yup. My last one took a rather quick end when a tiny bit of salty splash water got under the screen.. IP rating is only when it's fresh off production. Oh well, still a great phone (thanks to GrapheneOS)

by _blk

8/22/2026 at 6:44:21 AM

> Supporting a flip device with vertical folding would be a new form factor for GrapheneOS. The main use case for those is a tiny phone to use with one hand in the folded form factor.

So, I've been using flip phones now exclusively since the Samsung Z-Flip3 (and will never go back to slab phones unless the flip segment disappears), but I almost never use the outer screen. Maybe that is just me, but I have a feeling it's pretty common.

by moogly

8/22/2026 at 5:21:37 AM

Hopefully it will come to the razr line

by qwertytyyuu

8/22/2026 at 11:38:20 AM

I only buy Motorola's for their folded design, used ones from eBay are 200 eurobucks and look cool.

I guess another 5 years to wait for a legit open one, but hej, I'm waiting since a1200e.

by Muromec

8/22/2026 at 2:49:06 PM

eurobucks is an abomination of a word what are you doing sur

by jftkrjti

8/23/2026 at 1:32:54 AM

Credit to Dave Jones (EEVblog)

by layla5alive

8/22/2026 at 2:18:03 AM

Good. Would rather have a strong basic phone without flaky gimmicks.

by bitwize

8/22/2026 at 6:14:03 AM

I recently heard Motorola is also a direct competitor with Flock... Couldn't this potentially be a conflict of interest / purpose?

by hannasm

8/22/2026 at 6:15:26 AM

It makes sense for security cameras to be secure. Hacked security cameras are a big issue. Motorola investing in partnering with a more secure OS seems aligned.

by charcircuit

8/22/2026 at 6:52:35 AM

i believe that's not this Motorola (the phone company under Lenovo)

by hexagonwin

8/22/2026 at 2:49:17 AM

Looking forward to it. I will buy it right away.

by therein

8/22/2026 at 10:59:10 AM

Why would they emphasize the non-folding? As far I am concerned foldable smartphones can get bent ...

by raffael_de

8/22/2026 at 11:29:01 AM

They mentioned that the graphene compatible phone would cost more than the pixels, and currently the only moto phones that expensive are all folding models. So there was speculation it would be based on that line.

by nemomarx

8/22/2026 at 3:52:04 AM

This makes me curious to move off of ios.

by jmspring

8/22/2026 at 9:43:27 AM

Any info on how the baseband / modem is connected to the rest of the phone.

by CommanderData

8/22/2026 at 8:23:22 PM

It's going to be a Qualcomm setup. Any reason to think it'll be any different from usual?

by surajrmal

8/22/2026 at 2:07:12 AM

I'm fairly ignorant as to whether Motorola, as a company, will make a good steward for this kind of arrangement.

Does anybody have any inside baseball to share in terms of whether we can trust this arrangement to last longer than, say, a year?

by arcanemachiner

8/22/2026 at 2:29:18 AM

Not sure they've ever done anything like this, so time will tell.

I do know Motorola seems to not care much about software - they were still shipping 32 bit until embarrassingly recently, and are known for rarely updating their devices. From that lens, this could be a rather symbiotic relationship if it proves it can sell.

by silisili

8/22/2026 at 11:36:18 AM

Their past record bin this area includes ezx and razr2 series built on vanilla Linux and it wasn't petty. Nothing was released on time, code was awful (4k lines of TTY multiplexer driver in 2.4 series ). No bueno. But the phones themselves were cool.

by Muromec

8/22/2026 at 1:50:22 AM

Let's do a nice candybar. I'll buy it.

by newsomix9xl