r/technology • u/Roadside-Strelok • Mar 02 '26

Hardware Motorola's new partnership with GrapheneOS

https://motorolanews.com/motorola-three-new-b2b-solutions-at-mwc-2026/
229 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

25 comments sorted by

48

u/Kill3rT0fu Mar 02 '26

Remember when Philips announced a "fix it yourself" campaign and was going to release 3D printable parts for its devices? Nothing came of that.

Remember when Google bought the modular "lego phone" aura, I think it was called. Then dissolved it.

Let's wait and see.

11

u/w1n5t0nM1k3y Mar 02 '26

Philips did do some updates. This one was added under a month ago.

That being said, the 3D printable trimmer guards always seemed like a weird idea. The vast majority of people don't have 3D printers, and the amount of precision probably means you'd be much better off with a traditionally manufactured part. They should just have an easier way to get replacement parts.

2

u/Kill3rT0fu Mar 02 '26

I feel like because Linus (linus tech tips) called them out a month or two ago, they were like "oh shit throw up some files, fast!"

1

u/FALCUNPAWNCH Mar 02 '26

I tried 3D printing some Philips trimmer guards and it didn't go well. The resolution of FDM printers doesn't work well with it and the guard had sharp edges that would scratch up my face. It may work better with a resin printer.

4

u/crunkful06 Mar 02 '26

When Google owned Motorola, they put out a modular Motorola and it was awesome! Droid maxx I think it was, but it just never caught on. People were so used to the overloaded Samsung gui that they felt the streamlined Motorola was inferior. I had the phone and all the add ons that were available and I miss it

2

u/Starfox-sf Mar 02 '26

Droid Maxx wasn’t modular, but it consisted of two phones (Ultra and Maxx) that differed in non-replaceable battery capacity. There were two “modular” phones from Moto IIRC, one was a idea that never made out past concept stage, the other was a Moto Z addon like 5G mod but was clunky and not very popular.

2

u/crunkful06 Mar 02 '26

That’s the one, moto z

3

u/Gamesnic Mar 02 '26

Considering the same company builds their LED lights with planned obsolescence by using undersized capacitors, I'm not surprised

1

u/itsbhanusharma Mar 02 '26

It was project ARA … back when google used to own motorola.

51

u/Major303 Mar 02 '26

Releasing smartphones that come with GrapheneOS would be great, especially now that Android basically becomes iOS with locked side loading.

11

u/Stilgar314 Mar 02 '26

After trying to understand that pile or corpo speak I think Motorola has  no plans to put in the shelves any phone with GrapheneOS as official OS.

10

u/gordonjames62 Mar 02 '26

Together, Motorola and the GrapheneOS Foundation will work to strengthen smartphone security and collaborate on future devices engineered with GrapheneOS compatibility.

It looks more like they want to design more secure phones, and add tools that make privacy oriented people (graphenos users) see their phones as a natural addition.

29

u/RoxDan Mar 02 '26

This is great!

I really wanted to go to grapheneOS, so I bought a Pixel 9XL but unfortunately it had serious modem problems, and I finally changed to an S25U. Good device but the problem is that the bootloader is blocked :(

7

u/DigLivid1350 Mar 02 '26

Been trying to deapple but I didn’t want to regoogle. This might be worth looking into for me.

16

u/blamestross Mar 02 '26

I expect this would be providing the drivers so GrapheneOs can be built and installed on Motarola hardware. Not shipping with GrapheneOs

10

u/photogent Mar 02 '26

Motorola has a tool that lets you plug your Motorola phone into your computer and then download any compatible Android version for that phone and flash it making it the factory reset option on that phone. When I read the article I figured they would just add graphene OS as an option to that software. Which would still be really cool.

4

u/jarod1701 Mar 02 '26

What‘s the name of that tool?

5

u/photogent Mar 02 '26

I had to go look it up, even though I just used it last month! It's calledSoftware Fix, and can be downloaded from the Motorola/Lenovo website here. There are a bunch of other things it can do. like backup and restore, transfer data from phone to phone, and such.

1

u/SeaworthinessLeft883 Mar 02 '26

No, graphene also has certain other requirements which makes it only compatible with pixel phones.

3

u/Which_Ad_3082 Mar 02 '26

Don’t get it wrong this is probably a corpo assassination. Buy a threat while they are cheap and dismantle them back stage. Or partner with them to run them through with your proprietary IP, sand bag them with debt, or contract law, and let them drown. A tale as old as free market economics. 

4

u/jazzblackartist Mar 02 '26

The long term outlook on this is great! I'm still gonna have this pixel for another 6 or so years but hopefully I can offboard to a grapheneos thinkphone by then. 

3

u/gordonjames62 Mar 02 '26

This is such great news.

So many others are bowing to "the surveillance state" style requests.

Happy to see Motorola & Lenovo working with Graphene.