Comment by dns_snek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by dns_snek | Hacker News Reader

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It's not too late, Samsung is one of the most closed Android OEMs and they're going in the wrong direction. They just removed most of the recovery menu. [1]

Google is dead set on taking away our right to run software of our choice on devices that we own. I think if Motorola plays their cards right they could take the geeky enthusiast market by storm, and that's going to snowball into recommendations to friends and family, and eventually - corporate.

This could be the reality in the near future: Do you want to keep using ReVanced? Motorola. Do you want to install a custom OS? Motorola. Do you want privacy? Motorola.

However I think that Google could decide to sabotage them by forcing them to implement their user-hostile agenda, if I remember correctly there are conditions that OEMs must meet to be allowed access to Play Services/Play Store?

Google could refuse unless Motorola/GrapheneOS enforce developers ID verification and effectively give Google unilateral control over what type of software is allowed to run on our devices.

[1] https://9to5google.com/2026/02/27/samsung-galaxy-update-andr...

GrapheneOS currently doesn't ship Play Store or Services OOTB. They install as normal apps (albeit with GrapheneOS providing support code to make the fact that these things use/expose custom privileged APIs work correctly). I don't know if the Google TOS would prohibit that, at least I am not aware of any enforcement action against GrapheneOS in this regard. GrapheneOS also doesn't have Google's blessing, meaning some apps like Google Pay won't work on it. To get this, you need to apply to be an OEM.

Really Motorola doesn't need to sell a GOS phone. Motorola just need to sell a phone with the right hardware security features, open source/upstream their Android/Linux patches, and give users the ability to run GOS.

Hopefully they can then give you the option to buy one with GOS preinstalled, but even if they don't. It will be sufficient that it can run GOS.

Unlike Windows, nobody feels they're paying an inherent tax when buying a stock Android phone. I'm sure nobody will mind.

The hard part will be actually supporting the phone for long enough.

GOS is reliant on Google's open sourced Pixel android releases up to and including the 9 series. This is because GOS doesn't have the resources to handle that entire side of things. But I guess part of that is also that GOS doesn't have access to the necessary information to do that stuff properly either.

That's fair, this would still be a valuable development even if Motorola doesn't end up shipping devices with GrapheneOS preinstalled, but if they did I think there's a lot of potential for them to enter the mainstream. A device with GrapheneOS without any [major] caveats (like Play Integrity API, Google Pay not working) would be a game changer.

I can't see such a GrapheneOS existing without explicit Google support. And I don't think Google would support something like that unless they suddenly decided to actually not be evil again.

I 100% agree. It should have just happened 12 or 24 months ago. It's not too late, and there is a chance to capture some market, but it is late. If Motorola did this last year, I think they could have captured 10-20% market share. Their share will be reduced because the people who did care for long term updates have upgraded. Now they get 4+ years of updates because of Android. https://security.samsungmobile.com/workScope.smsb

This is a power move on Motorola's side, and I'm here for it.

There are conditions for OEM's installing any of the Google services. Although, so far it seems that graphene have been able to work around them (although, this is not a world I traverse).

I don't think the standard Android user wants to install ReVanced. They don't care about custom OS's. They want support and updates.

I remember the dark times where you purchased hardware, and you would be lucky to get 4 years of updates.

Motorola/Lenovo are late to this game. Two years ago, people updated to phones with phones that would get monthly security updates for five years. This was new to the Android ecosystem two years ago (with the exception of maybe a few Pixel phones).

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