Yet another Hacker News

There's a high chance of devices being sold with GrapheneOS preinstalled in 2027

73 points Cider9986 55 minutes ago 32 comments

Cider9986 50 minutes ago | parent

The upcoming Signature 27 which will be announced today at the Snapdragon Summit and has been teased by Motorola on their socials and websites will have a likelihood of a US release because they've posted about it on US social accounts. It looks interesting...

The 2026 Signature, in the UK, was $1460 USD. In Brazil it is selling for $1230. The Pixel 11 pro XL, which the Signature beats on hardware in practically every way sells for $1300 on Google's website.

It looks interesting... I didn't love the 2026 design [1] but it looks better than whatever this is. Here's pictures:

https://xxcancel.com/moto

https://x.com/moto

[1] https://www.motorola.com/gb/en/p/phones/motorola-signature/s...

asdff 41 minutes ago | parent

Flagship phones are so damn expensive for what you are getting. I just buy whatever is the current iphone SE which is usually around $300 for the top storage sku when I show up to buy it a couple years after release. At my current burn rate $1300 would be like 20 years spend on phones for me.

SoftTalker 32 minutes ago | parent

That's also what I buy with Apple now. When I was using Android I'd buy a cheap "Moto G" for maybe $150 brand new. Never understood dropping a grand or more on a mobile phone.

iteria 17 minutes ago | parent

I keep my phone until the security updates stop. I buy top of the line phones because cheaper one suck. I tried a cheap phone and it used to lock up all the time. These phones are crappier than my obsolete top of the line phone. There has got to be a middle ground between 1K flagship phones and cheap sub-$200 phones, but I swear I can't find it.

I just keep buying phones with way more features than I desire just so that having too many apps open at once or going to the wrong Javascript laden web page doesn't slow my phone to a crawl. I just tell myself that at least I only replace my phone every 5 to 7 years. If it wasn't for work, I'd keep them longer, but the OS has to be patched for work stuff to be on it.

asdff 15 minutes ago | parent

>There has got to be a middle ground between 1K flagship phones and cheap sub-$200 phones, but I swear I can't find it.

In my experience this is literally the iphone SE. Look at the chipset, its no slouch.

jrochkind1 14 minutes ago | parent

Moto G Power is the cheap phone that hasn't sucked for years. I've bought many been happy. The one time I tried a Samsung, it was a mistake.

but they bumped up prices significantly a few months ago due to chip prices or tarrifs or who knows what, it's not so cheap anymore.

SoftTalker 9 minutes ago | parent

> If it wasn't for work, I'd keep them longer

I think if work demands a better phone, then work should be buying you a better phone.

microtonal 10 minutes ago | parent

Cameras of flagships are still significantly better than a $150 Moto G. If you are using a smartphone in place of a camera and like good-quality photos, it's worth the money. That said, flagships can last many years as well.

I update pretty frequently, but all the older devices get used by family members, etc.

SoftTalker 7 minutes ago | parent

The camera is probably the least important thing on the phone for me, but yeah if photos are important to you then that might rule out the cheaper tiers of phones.

echelon_musk 15 minutes ago | parent

Sadly there are no more iPhone SE models so this strategy won't work forever. Eventually iOS 18 will stop getting security updates and you'll have to use the increasingly worse newer versions of iOS.

SapporoChris 12 minutes ago | parent

What stopped me from buying flagship phones is the repair costs for phones are far too expensive in relationship to the value of the phone. Results will vary, but waterproofing usually diminishes after a repair.

Lord_Zero 8 minutes ago | parent

Eh... get protection plan, or trade up every year for big discount on the next flagship. Or with AT&T plans you are getting a "free" phone fairly often if you don't intend to leave the carrier for a few years (most people wont). The parent comment you replied to makes some assumptions that you have to spend full price all at once every year which is false. Also, there's almost always a deep discount on Pixel phones around most holidays.

And if you truly are ultra budget $300 phone guy then sure this doesn't apply to you.

_aavaa_ 32 minutes ago | parent

That’s not saying much. The selling point of pixels has always been the software.

horsawlarway 23 minutes ago | parent

The selling point of graphene is basically that you get the pixel software experience.

It just puts Google in the same sandbox Google puts everyone else.

Typing this on a pixel running graphene.

Cider9986 17 minutes ago | parent

The thing I like about GrapheneOS is it's the most private operating system while still having great usability.

drnick1 9 minutes ago | parent

> It just puts Google in the same sandbox Google puts everyone else.

Yes, you can do that, but Graphene is probably best used without Google apps at all. If you use Google Maps, sandboxed or not, Google still knows where you are, what speed you drive, etc, and can rat you out to car insurance companies or the government.

_ink_ 7 minutes ago | parent

And here I am with my 26 Signature, still on Android 16 with Patch Level from January and the phone reporting happily, Looking Good! Everything up to date!

Get your update process working @Motorola!

movsx 24 minutes ago | parent

Might someone know whether banking apps worldwide will work?

drnick1 21 minutes ago | parent

Probably not, because of Google attestation, the cancer of Android.

qurren 16 minutes ago | parent

FWIW the financial institutions I use (all major US brokerages) have no issues with Google attestation, and if they implemented it I'd just move all my assets out to a different one.

I don't regularly use an actual bank account anymore, the cash management solutions from these brokerages work great and can do everything including direct deposit, payments, wire transfers, and ATM/debit cards, and have SIPC protection in place of FDIC.

lawn 10 minutes ago | parent

Everything in Sweden I've tried works.

microtonal 6 minutes ago | parent

My banks (in Europe) work fine. The primary thing that is missing is tap-to-pay because Google is abusing its monopoly position and not letting GrapheneOS pass remote attestation. There are some apps that have their own tap-to-pay, such as Curve in most of Europe and PayPal in Germany, but they don't work great everywhere (e.g. where I live, all payment terminals accept tap-to-pay based on debit cards, but more than 50% does not accept credit card-based tap-to-pay, so something like Curve or Garmin Pay doesn't work in many stores).

At any rate, there is a well-maintained list here: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

Pfhortune 16 minutes ago | parent

Amongst the several banks I deal with, only one uses Google's attestation framework in a way that blocks GrapheneOS.

That said, the website still works fine for that one.

Cider9986 13 minutes ago | parent

You can check your specific app here: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

GrapheneOS has convinced apps to add compatibility. Hell, Roblox has official GrapheneOS support. The idea is to get more users in order to convince the very few apps that block GrapheneOS, to support it.

ciferkey 13 minutes ago | parent

This site tracks the status of what apps work: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

The official GrapheneOS docs contains a developer guide on how to fix banking apps when they are not working. Bank app developers have been surprisingly receptive to making the changes, weirdly enough. You can see in some of the issues tracked on the site where people reached out and the developers eventually made the apps work.

I've been running GrapheneOS for a while (I have posts on the blog in my bio if you want to see some day-to-day info) and only one bank app gave me trouble. I had to toggle a setting and then everything worked.

Separate from this is wallet and payment apps which still have not had much traction on GrapheneOS.

Cider9986 10 minutes ago | parent

> Separate from this is wallet and payment apps which still have not had much traction on GrapheneOS.

Curve works in Europe and Paypal has a trial thing in Germany for tap to pay IIRC. There's nothing in the US unfortunately, yet.

seany 5 minutes ago | parent

Will they be unlockable?

microtonal 4 minutes ago | parent

Two clarifications:

- This is about preinstallation. For the planned models, you can install GrapheneOS yourself. This should be really simple, if it is similar to the current installation process for Pixels, which can be fully completed through their website.

- The preinstalled devices don't seem from Motorola themselves, as mentioned later in the thread: Probably not via their website but rather another company provided with the devices directly by Motorola. It could be us doing it ourselves but we aren't set up to deal with it.

Really excited for the Motorola GrapheneOS phones! (Currently have a P10P with GrapheneOS.)

madduci 3 minutes ago | parent

I wish they will bring a €200 device with GrapheneOS out