Go to some developing countries around Asia and you'll be surprised how people prioritise features when buying a phone vs developed ones. The developing countries account for most of the sales of most phone manufacturers. Phones that are like $150-200 sell like hot cakes.

This is evident even in the laptop segment. What developers want and what the average consumer wants/needs are two different things. Eg. Framework laptops. Macbook Pro vs Air.

The hard part is building an ecosystem for app providers that is easy enough for users, app developers, and device manufacturers to engage with while still being secure enough. Google/Apple are asserting a lot of control over this space right now. But their technical moat is limited to them gate keeping their own OS and devices.

A more open ecosystem here could force some changes in this space. Given recent turmoil around treaties, tariffs, etc., the EU, and other regions, depending a bit less on US based software providers here would be healthy and overdue. Somebody needs to start somewhere for this to happen.

However, moving the use of alternative operating systems for mobile devices beyond the hobbyist/enthusiast level is going to require a bit of work. This is the main blocker to adoption of alternatives to Android and IOS.

Some policy changes would be helpful. E.g. mandating proper access to banking and other things outside of the Apple Store and Google Playstore ecosystems would be helpful. Right now, banks default to covering essentially only those two for "security reasons". That gives a de-facto oligarchy to Google and Apple. Breaking that open might require some arm twisting.

With this announcement, Motorola has consolidated its top position, making it unlikely for me to choose something else.

They should be funding FOSS like they are funding science.

Samsung has a great offer with their Galaxy Enterprise Edition phones. Phones with 5 year warranty. 7 years of software updates.

Motorola, welcome! I wish you did this before I bought my last Samsung phone. That being said, if you can keep this up till my current phone needs replacing, you will have a customer in me, guaranteed.

My Lenovo experience has surpassed that of any other computer hardware brand.

The PWM issues are inexcusable. Cost saving measure on a £999 phone. Ridiculous!

however this might be only for their new Motorola Signature line of flagships...

(I opted to donate via bank transfer instead, because that is at least addressed at the GrapheneOS Foundation, not one specific member.)

FWIW, https://ised-isde.canada.ca/cc/lgcy/fdrlCrpDtls.html?p=0&cor... lists three directors for the GrapheneOS Foundation: Khalykbek Yelshibekov, Daniel Micay, and Dmytro Mukhomor.

So with them partnering up with graphene, I am super excited too. Motorola phones are also pretty price effective imo for the quality of hardware.

If you don't want Google monitoring your payment you shouldn't use mobile payments. In fact you shouldn't even use cards, because those likely have agreements with Google for data sharing. If you're serious, it's simple, just use cash.

Didn't you read the article? It's kinda hard to miss the Lenovo all through the press release.

Maybe it is an exception? I'm in EU if that matters.

And Motorola is almost free of bloatware. It is practically a stock Android.

We have the EU Parliament, the EU Council, the EU Commission. Often they have different views in itself (e.g. factions in EU Parliament, or commissars in the commission that are more end-user-friendly vs. ones that are move business-friendly). And the EU Council (the ring of head-of-member-states) is more often than not just of one opinion, e.g. thing at Poland when it was governed by PiS. Or of Hungary and to some smaller extend Slovakia.

"The EU wants ..." is therefore quite often wrong.

Well now I'm confused. I've always received SMS as fallback when my contacts add me to RCS group messages. But apparently this doesn't always work according to people on the internet at large?

Unfortunately most people still think they're "texting" and have no idea Google and Apple pulled a bait and switch. Meanwhile on my end I receive emoji react spam, each emoji as an independent message, in an incredibly verbose form that quotes the entire message.

It's simultaneously misleading people, a DoS against non-BigTech clients, and monopolistic. The mobile ecosystem just keeps getting worse and there's no sign of regulations fixing it any time soon.

Secured credentials work fine, everything works fine except stuff that by design is locked in to Google like Google Pay.

I once bought a oneplus phone to unlock the bootloader, they have the same process requiring an account etc, saying it could take up to 2 weeks to get the code. they never emailed it to me so I returned the phone.

For me, the big question is if Google Wallet & its NFC payments will work. They don't on GrapheneOS currently, but if Motorola plans for this to be a fully Google-certified phone with GApps and everything, it will have to, somehow.

Searching duckduckgo for 'Unlocked {device}' returns a lot of results on the shopping tab for phones on Amazon and eBay like the pixel 8/9 plus plenty of other "recent" android devices. Walmart and Bestbuy seem to still have dedicated sections for unlocked phones as well.

> [Motorola Mobility LLC] is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Hong Kong based Chinese technology giant Lenovo.

Lenovo is a publicly traded company, and according to its shareholding structure report for 2025 [2] its main shareholder is Legend Holdings Corporation. (Lenovo is also listed as a subsidiary on Legend Holding Corporation's Wikipedia page [3].)

Legend Holding Corporation is again publicly traded, with all big shareholders being Chinese according to its 2024 annual report [4]. The biggest one is CAS Holdings with 30% of the shares.

The China Academy of Sciences is owned by the Chinese government.

So it seems like if Google still owns part of Motorola Mobility, it's not a main shareholder.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Mobility

[2] https://investor.lenovo.com/en/ir/shareholding.php

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legend_Holdings

[4] https://www.hkexnews.hk/listedco/listconews/sehk/2025/0429/2...

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?

This is the community-maintained banking app compatibility list: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

The ThinkPhone is an exception, yeah. It’s similar to older Android One phones like their Moto X4. Not different because you are in EU, US models get same treatment.

The razr and edge lines do not get as reliable monthly updates and ship with bloatware.

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.

That said, I have no idea how often that fails in practice.

And that is how reactions are sent in SMS/MMS. Your app just isn't recognizing them to display them nicely. Maybe try a different one?

https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...

But Samsung hasn't allowed unlocking the bootloader on their phones for many years. And they are far far from the only ones in that state.

You basically have to research each specific phone far ahead of time. And beware! Because there's, for example, lots of guides telling you how to unlock my S22 phone. But as of ~2023 Samsung now blocks all those previous exploits that the unlocked software used to use.

It's a mess and a half.

My girlfriend had one of the Moto Play models from 2020 and it was horrific. Is their Android setup really any better these days?

Nitpick, but it’s just ‘blob’ as in ‘a big blob of bytes’. It’s not an acronym or abbreviation for anything :)

From a phone by a Chinese company.

Unless GrapheneOS handles the radio firmware, not really interested.

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.

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.

Edit: and I'm not btw - for all I know BLOB in DB land might be backronym from blob in the common usage.

Not like I would try to give you advice on unlocking your phone in the first place as I'm mostly clueless myself.

Maybe time to trade up or sideways? Graphene OS only officially supports Google Pixel devices anyway(for now). If Motorola could somehow recapture the magic of the Razer today with a new phone, that would be cool too!

https://grapheneos.org/faq#supported-devices

Don't remember that at the moment, it should be one of the requirements they list under "future hardware" In the FAQ.

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.

Probably depends a lot on where you live tbh. Here in India it's moderately common. I think Europe and Latin America also have a fair amount of sales.

Imagine if IRC clients started adding such functionality. Certain protocols and conventions are useful precisely because of their minimalism.

Google and Apple are already running their own walled off proprietary messaging platforms. There was no need to tamper with SMS.

In both cases it's something closed and the government has shown overreach. (Yes, China a lot more than the US, but still ... things are not looking good a the moment. And I have no more trust, even if the political direction changes for a presidency period or two.)

But yes, ultimately we want open source firmware. Still, then there could be hardware backdoors anyways ...

Honestly, I do regret not having given them iPhones when they still had the cognitive ability to learn new user interfaces. iOS UI, on its most basic, default form, has remained stable except for cosmetic changes and the move away from the home button. Also UI is generally quite consistent between apps. Android on the other hand, keeps changing and varies wildly depending on the manufacturer and generation.

Now it's too late for them to learn new UI paradigms, so I'm stuck with near-vanilla Android flavours.

Model name?

But since RCS has become such a mess, and is so anti-competition (you can't make your own app, or servers), I think the answer is now extremely clear: don't use your telecom's messaging system at all, they are all by far the slowest, least reliable, and least private option. App-based messaging is better in almost all practical cases, and I think it's also a healthier future to head towards.

And there are indeed issues.

Yet these issues are perhaps 1 foot high, and the issues with China and PRC's interference in domestic corporations, reaches to the moon.

There's literally no comparison. Even now.

And on top of attestation, good luck if you've ever changed your legal name, in getting myID to behave at all.

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

So no, I don't think that's a small amount of risk, even if there's billions of Android users in the wild.

Especially considering how much money can be stolen from peoples bank accounts

Several phones downgraded in this regard, even going to usb2.0, like Fairphone :/

it's hilarious how this was considered by "youtubers" an outdated model when I was buying it.

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.

That said, they do seem to provide long-term security updates for their more recent models: https://eprel.ec.europa.eu/screen/product/smartphonestablets...

They also make some pretty cool niche devices. Phones with massive batteries, for instance.

67% of android users in 2025 did not get their banking credentials stolen.

> In Q2 2025, the number of attacks involving malware, adware, and unwanted software decreased compared to Q1.

https://securelist.com/malware-report-q2-2025-mobile-statist...

Windows XP had an audio recording app and most people didn't even have microphones. Now we have smartphones that don't have a way to record audio as a file or even write text notes built into the system, forcing you to use third-party tools that can be maliscious.

> youtubers

marketers ;)

> 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

It is true that at certain points I have bought brand new Android phones that did not come with such basic utilities, including utilities that bargain priced feature phones were expected to have, like a sound recorder.

IIRC, the Droid Turbo 2 I got in 2016ish came with Android 2 and did not come with a sound recording app stock. It also did not have a file browser stock. This was a Flagship product. The flashlight was not included for long enough for the top ten app, a flashlight app, to be on a significant quantity of android phones and end up being a data harvesting operation.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2013/12/...