this post was submitted on 22 Aug 2026
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[–] BigTurkey@lemmy.dbzer0.com 29 points 1 week ago (3 children)

Gonna buy one, gotta support the cause. We need this phone to do well.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 26 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Edit: @plyth@feddit.org pointed out that Motorola is in fact split into two separate companies. The phone company is effectively Lenovo, so Chinese, and not related to the American surveillance technology branch.

Not sure I'd trust Lenovo/Motorola Mobility either, but that's a different story.

In June 2026, Motorola bricked its whole line of routers without any explanation, leaving their customers with broken hardware.


~~The main thing you're supporting is Motorola, the second biggest provider of surveillance technology in the US after Flock. Deflock lists 5% of the cameras as Motorola, but the share is increasing as backlash against Flock is growing and Flock cameras are replaced with more low key competitors.~~

~~404media has reported on how Motorola cameras are used by ice.~~

~~"Gotta support the cause" is one hell of a dangerous sentiment under capitalism.~~

[–] yxc999@lemmy.ml 11 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Damn I guess most of us didn't know that, thank you for sharing.

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 5 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

They're keeping a low profile on their surveillance technology while successfully marketing themselves as a privacy alternative in consumer tech. Its pretty fascinating to watch. I wouldn't blame anyone for missing it.

It's also worth reading up on Aviglon, a subsidiary of Motorola specializing in surveillance technology.

[–] plyth@feddit.org 10 points 1 week ago

Different company?

Motorola was split into two independent public companies: Motorola Solutions (its legal successor) and Motorola Mobility (spun off), on January 4, 2011

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola

[–] sudoer777@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Fitting how the US part of the company does more survellance than the Chinese part

[–] cabbage@piefed.social 1 points 1 week ago

Or so we hope, anyway.

[–] SocialistVibes01@lemmy.ml 0 points 1 week ago

GrapheneOS' cause is only theirs. They don't share with the ecosystem

[–] TWeaK@lemmy.today -5 points 1 week ago (3 children)

You're supporting diva devs selling out.

We don't need GOS to do well. We need a fully open ecosystem for phone operating systems. GOS devs don't let anyone incorporate their code.

They also refuse to provide basic functionality like inverted navbar buttons. Because they're diva devs.

[–] prex@aussie.zone 23 points 1 week ago (1 children)

...don't let anyone else incorporate their code.

Is it not open source?

[–] TWeaK@lemmy.today 1 points 1 week ago (2 children)

It's open source, but the license agreement prohibits using it in other projects. You can do it for your own personal builds, but not any published builds.

[–] protogen420@lemmy.blahaj.zone 3 points 1 week ago

so, literally not open source by the OSI's definition, great

[–] other8026@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago (1 children)

That's very false. There are other OSes with GrapheneOS code or forks of GrapheneOS.

[–] TWeaK@lemmy.today 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

Elements of it, perhaps, but things like the sandboxing are explicitly prohibited in other Android ROMs. Otherwise almost all custom ROMs would be using it, or some flavour of it.

other OSes

And this terminology kind of tells me you don't really know the custom ROM scene.

[–] other8026@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

GOS devs don’t let anyone incorporate their code.

False

They also refuse to provide basic functionality like inverted navbar buttons.

This is supported in AOSP now.

Because they’re diva devs.

This doesn't seem like a mature thing to say just because you want to flip buttons and are annoyed that the privacy and security-focused project didn't add a feature to flip buttons.

[–] TWeaK@lemmy.today 1 points 6 days ago* (last edited 6 days ago)

This is supported in AOSP now.

No it isn't. GrapheneOS is directly based on AOSP, so it includes everything AOSP does. GOS devs have made it clear they want you to use gestures, and they only include the navbar at all because it's still in AOSP.

Inverted navbar is in wide a range of other AOSP custom ROMs (including LineageOS, which could be confused with pure AOSP), because those developers chose to incorporate it. But it isn't in AOSP by default.

This doesn’t seem like a mature thing to say just because you want to flip buttons and are annoyed that the privacy and security-focused project didn’t add a feature to flip buttons.

It's an accurate take on their general attitude to polite requests on their github. And the reason the requests are so excessively polite is because people are treading on eggshells due to their diva reputation - albeit, this reputation is somewhat drowned out by their fandom.

It's also not mature to downvote people just because you disagree with them.

And furthermore, the reason I use the navbar is because I want a force close long-press gesture on the back button, so I can more easily close apps and stop their background processes. To me, that's a fairly important feature for privacy and security. That's also likely a big reason Google pushed away from that, and to see GOS devs align themselves with Google in such a manner raises my eyebrow against them, at the very least.