7 ms·

I don't want to gush about this too much, but it's SUCH a big deal. Graphene has languished with hardware support for so long - they basically only had Pixel de

I don't want to gush about this too much, but it's SUCH a big deal. Graphene has languished with hardware support for so long - they basically only had Pixel devices as first-class citizens, which are not bad devices per se, but it's hard when you're spending most of your time doing something without the manufacturer's support. There is a very real possibility that we end up with devices that can play modern mobile games at high frame rates on a secure, privacy-focused mobile OS, which is a huge step towards general adoption of something like this as a daily driver.

monegator 7mo ago
"general" people really play actual games on phones? I thought the general public at most played with time waster freemium games
- archievillain 7mo ago
  I wouldn't consider gachas to be "actual games" (sue me), but yeah, they do tend to have way more complex gameplay and graphics than the timewaster freemium games of yore. Genshin Impact is essentially a single-player MMO, it has an open world and lots of characters and different weapons etc etc.
  - monegator 7mo ago
    still wouldn't bet the general phone audience find those games to be the the deciding factor in a phone
    - DrewADesign 7mo ago
      I think it would be on par with camera quality— really important to some, bot not a huge deal for most. Good enough quality screen for solid video media performance, generally, would be an absolute must I imagine.
    - applfanboysbgon 7mo ago
      The "general phone audience" is some 5 billion people. If even 10% of them want to play games, on what is in the current year likely to be their primary if not only computer, that's already a market segment of 500 million. It wouldn't honestly surprise me if the number is closer to 15 or 20%, mobile gaming is extremely popular.
      - monegator 7mo ago
        i would be surprised if it was more than 1-2% for those "graphic intensive games" normies use consoles, sometimes PCs my personal beef, after a camera that gets decent photos in low light, would be an accurate GPS that doesn't crap out after half an hour
        SietrixDev 7mo ago
        And yet Apple was at some point called one of the largest gaming companies in the world by revenue https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/06/05/apple-one-of-the-biggest-gaming-companies-in-the-world-analyst-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/06/05/apple-one-of-the-biggest...
        applfanboysbgon 7mo ago
        I think a lot of HN users, living in our own PC-oriented bubble, may not have realised the world has completely passed PCs by and that smartphones are the personal computers of the current generation. While PS5 and Switch each have about 100-150 million in sales, there are an estimated 3 billion mobile game players. Are a majority of those "mobile game players" playing Flappy Bird, sure. But again, even 10% of that number being interested in "real games" would outnumber PS5 and Switch players combined. Fortnite and PUBG each have hundreds of millions of active users, most are on console but around 20% appear to be on mobile from a quick search. Genshin Impact also has tens of of millions MAU, a non-neglible percentage of which are mobile players. There are hundreds of millions of people for whom being able to play 3D games on their phone matters.
        kuboble 7mo ago
        Anecdotally, In public transport I see almost as many people playing games on their phones as those watching videos.
- deleted 7mo ago
  [deleted]
worksonmine 7mo ago
> There is a very real possibility that we end up with devices that can play modern mobile games at high frame rates on a secure, privacy-focused mobile OS, which is a huge step towards general adoption of something like this as a daily driver. This might be true, but the priorities are depressing.
Markoff 7mo ago
it's quite a big deal Motorola will have officialy devices with unlockable bootloader now that Samsung is ditching it and Xiaomi is making unlocking almost impossible, Sony reintroduced it but has probably the worst VFM in the market, so having Motorola with pretty good VFM (better than Pixel outside US) is big news, though they don't really make smaller phones and I'm worried about camera quality or gcam stability
thot_experiment 7mo ago
I'm not holding my breath but it would be amazing to have root and be able to tap to pay without constantly playing cat and mouse with google.
- HugoTea 7mo ago
  GrapheneOS doesn't give you root access, citing security issues it introduces. You could re-compile your own copy with root access, though not sure if we'll then be back to some non-certified OS that can't make payments...
  - thot_experiment 7mo ago
    Yikes. Nevermind. The whole phone security model is one of the worst things to happen to computing, the concept that you shouldn't own your device for safety is so fucked.
    - b112 7mo ago
      I think is great, if there are no ramifications when skilled people unlock it. There's just too much hacking going on, malicious behaviour, to allow uneducated masses to have root on a phone. I've seen so many people just not understanding the outcome of their actions. You'd get people rooting because some shady app lied about why, and just wanted control. And we don't need more botnets. And it's why banks sometimes throw a fit. So if a recompile does the trick, and no downside, then it'd be fine.
      - thot_experiment 7mo ago
        Lots of freedoms have downsides that are outweighed by the upsides, I'm absolutely unconvinced that the line lands on the far side of allowing you to control your phone.
        ChocolateGod 7mo ago
        You can control your phone, it's just your bank won't allow your phone to store EMV keys if it's a non-locked down environment.
torben-friis 7mo ago
The key enabler is the camera. Manage a flagship level result in a Motorola, that’s the main reason people pay for High end devices nowadays. I’m seeing enthusiasts go out of their way to get vivos and xiaomis now that they are surpassing the western counterparts based solely on that. I think it’s doable, pixels did it with meh hardware for years. But I’m not sure if there’s enough overlap between people who care about selfie quality and open source enthusiasts.
- strcat 7mo ago
  Motorola Signature and Motorola Razr Fold are ranked above the Pixel 10 Pro on https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/ https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/. Pixels have fantastic camera hardware and software which is fully functional on GrapheneOS which isn't something we need to lose on a Motorola flagship. There will be much better CPU and GPU performance via Snapdragon too. The compromises are mostly in terms of getting some security improvements while losing others but we'll still be able to meet all of our official security requirements.
  - torben-friis 7mo ago
    I haven’t been able to see actual results that match those tests in the Motorolas sadly. Maybe it’s more accurate in technical terms but I haven’t found good results in practice. >Pixels have fantastic camera hardware and software which is fully functional on GrapheneOS which isn't something we need to lose on a Motorola flagship. This is very interesting to me! Does graphene OS manage to keep google’s processing? How does that work?
    - Itoldmyselfso 7mo ago
      Pixel camera app is fully supported by GOS, you just install it from Play store (or from other sources). If you don't have Google Photos installed the last photo preview won't work, but you can install a 'shim' app that fixes it without need for Photos app: https://github.com/lukaspieper/Gcam-Services-Provider https://github.com/lukaspieper/Gcam-Services-Provider https://grapheneos.org/usage#pixel-camera https://grapheneos.org/usage#pixel-camera
bubblethink 7mo ago
This is such a strange comment that is full of contradictions. Pixels are supported because the manufacturer supports alternate OSes. I don't get what languishing means here. Pixel hardware lags behind the latest Snapdragon hardware, but it's not something that average people know or care about. So, you can gush all you want, but I don't see why it's a big deal. It's great that they found an OEM and it's great for the overall health of the project, but not because of gaming or the latest Snapdragon.
- user2722 7mo ago
  I do hope however having a Snapdragon device will be beneficial to having postmarketOS support. For now having Android-type OS on a daily driver is a must, but for older devices (thinking of 10 years time) I'd like to explore an OS which doesn't depend of Google open-source drops and delayed security open-source drops, which is the situation for ROMs without an ODM partner.
  - bubblethink 7mo ago
    Do you mean to say that postmarketOS is somehow better on non Pixel devices? I would assume that Pixels are closest to upstream and have the longest software support life in Android world.
    - opan 7mo ago
      pmOS runs well on a couple OnePlus phones (6, 6T). For whatever reason the Snapdragon 845 and 865 have decent mainline support. I expect the OnePlus 8T to join the prior list of phones in the near future. You can similarly look at which gaming handhelds are supported by ROCKNIX and what SoC they use to get an idea for which ARM SoCs have decent mainline support. I expect the vast majority of phones and other ARM devices to not be very well-supported. RockChip is usually the safest bet, but I've been pleasantly surprised with some Snapdragon stuff.
- gchamonlive 7mo ago
  Does pixel support alternate OSes or it just doesn't get in the way of custom firmware developers? And for the gaming aspect, there is a huge market for mobile gaming, specially in Asia, so having a manufacturer like Motorola adopting GrapheneOS as a first class citizen will improve the chances that high performance applications will have better performance in such OSes which is a big win.

monegator 7mo ago

"general" people really play actual games on phones? I thought the general public at most played with time waster freemium games

archievillain 7mo ago
I wouldn't consider gachas to be "actual games" (sue me), but yeah, they do tend to have way more complex gameplay and graphics than the timewaster freemium games of yore. Genshin Impact is essentially a single-player MMO, it has an open world and lots of characters and different weapons etc etc.
- monegator 7mo ago
  still wouldn't bet the general phone audience find those games to be the the deciding factor in a phone
  - DrewADesign 7mo ago
    I think it would be on par with camera quality— really important to some, bot not a huge deal for most. Good enough quality screen for solid video media performance, generally, would be an absolute must I imagine.
  - applfanboysbgon 7mo ago
    The "general phone audience" is some 5 billion people. If even 10% of them want to play games, on what is in the current year likely to be their primary if not only computer, that's already a market segment of 500 million. It wouldn't honestly surprise me if the number is closer to 15 or 20%, mobile gaming is extremely popular.
    - monegator 7mo ago
      i would be surprised if it was more than 1-2% for those "graphic intensive games" normies use consoles, sometimes PCs my personal beef, after a camera that gets decent photos in low light, would be an accurate GPS that doesn't crap out after half an hour
      - SietrixDev 7mo ago
        And yet Apple was at some point called one of the largest gaming companies in the world by revenue https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/06/05/apple-one-of-the-biggest-gaming-companies-in-the-world-analyst-says.html https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/06/05/apple-one-of-the-biggest...
      - applfanboysbgon 7mo ago
        I think a lot of HN users, living in our own PC-oriented bubble, may not have realised the world has completely passed PCs by and that smartphones are the personal computers of the current generation. While PS5 and Switch each have about 100-150 million in sales, there are an estimated 3 billion mobile game players. Are a majority of those "mobile game players" playing Flappy Bird, sure. But again, even 10% of that number being interested in "real games" would outnumber PS5 and Switch players combined. Fortnite and PUBG each have hundreds of millions of active users, most are on console but around 20% appear to be on mobile from a quick search. Genshin Impact also has tens of of millions MAU, a non-neglible percentage of which are mobile players. There are hundreds of millions of people for whom being able to play 3D games on their phone matters.
      - kuboble 7mo ago
        Anecdotally, In public transport I see almost as many people playing games on their phones as those watching videos.
deleted 7mo ago
[deleted]

worksonmine 7mo ago

> There is a very real possibility that we end up with devices that can play modern mobile games at high frame rates on a secure, privacy-focused mobile OS, which is a huge step towards general adoption of something like this as a daily driver. This might be true, but the priorities are depressing.

Markoff 7mo ago

it's quite a big deal Motorola will have officialy devices with unlockable bootloader now that Samsung is ditching it and Xiaomi is making unlocking almost impossible, Sony reintroduced it but has probably the worst VFM in the market, so having Motorola with pretty good VFM (better than Pixel outside US) is big news, though they don't really make smaller phones and I'm worried about camera quality or gcam stability

thot_experiment 7mo ago

I'm not holding my breath but it would be amazing to have root and be able to tap to pay without constantly playing cat and mouse with google.

HugoTea 7mo ago
GrapheneOS doesn't give you root access, citing security issues it introduces. You could re-compile your own copy with root access, though not sure if we'll then be back to some non-certified OS that can't make payments...
- thot_experiment 7mo ago
  Yikes. Nevermind. The whole phone security model is one of the worst things to happen to computing, the concept that you shouldn't own your device for safety is so fucked.
  - b112 7mo ago
    I think is great, if there are no ramifications when skilled people unlock it. There's just too much hacking going on, malicious behaviour, to allow uneducated masses to have root on a phone. I've seen so many people just not understanding the outcome of their actions. You'd get people rooting because some shady app lied about why, and just wanted control. And we don't need more botnets. And it's why banks sometimes throw a fit. So if a recompile does the trick, and no downside, then it'd be fine.
    - thot_experiment 7mo ago
      Lots of freedoms have downsides that are outweighed by the upsides, I'm absolutely unconvinced that the line lands on the far side of allowing you to control your phone.
      - ChocolateGod 7mo ago
        You can control your phone, it's just your bank won't allow your phone to store EMV keys if it's a non-locked down environment.

torben-friis 7mo ago

The key enabler is the camera. Manage a flagship level result in a Motorola, that’s the main reason people pay for High end devices nowadays. I’m seeing enthusiasts go out of their way to get vivos and xiaomis now that they are surpassing the western counterparts based solely on that. I think it’s doable, pixels did it with meh hardware for years. But I’m not sure if there’s enough overlap between people who care about selfie quality and open source enthusiasts.

strcat 7mo ago
Motorola Signature and Motorola Razr Fold are ranked above the Pixel 10 Pro on https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/ https://www.dxomark.com/smartphones/. Pixels have fantastic camera hardware and software which is fully functional on GrapheneOS which isn't something we need to lose on a Motorola flagship. There will be much better CPU and GPU performance via Snapdragon too. The compromises are mostly in terms of getting some security improvements while losing others but we'll still be able to meet all of our official security requirements.
- torben-friis 7mo ago
  I haven’t been able to see actual results that match those tests in the Motorolas sadly. Maybe it’s more accurate in technical terms but I haven’t found good results in practice. >Pixels have fantastic camera hardware and software which is fully functional on GrapheneOS which isn't something we need to lose on a Motorola flagship. This is very interesting to me! Does graphene OS manage to keep google’s processing? How does that work?
  - Itoldmyselfso 7mo ago
    Pixel camera app is fully supported by GOS, you just install it from Play store (or from other sources). If you don't have Google Photos installed the last photo preview won't work, but you can install a 'shim' app that fixes it without need for Photos app: https://github.com/lukaspieper/Gcam-Services-Provider https://github.com/lukaspieper/Gcam-Services-Provider https://grapheneos.org/usage#pixel-camera https://grapheneos.org/usage#pixel-camera

bubblethink 7mo ago

This is such a strange comment that is full of contradictions. Pixels are supported because the manufacturer supports alternate OSes. I don't get what languishing means here. Pixel hardware lags behind the latest Snapdragon hardware, but it's not something that average people know or care about. So, you can gush all you want, but I don't see why it's a big deal. It's great that they found an OEM and it's great for the overall health of the project, but not because of gaming or the latest Snapdragon.

user2722 7mo ago
I do hope however having a Snapdragon device will be beneficial to having postmarketOS support. For now having Android-type OS on a daily driver is a must, but for older devices (thinking of 10 years time) I'd like to explore an OS which doesn't depend of Google open-source drops and delayed security open-source drops, which is the situation for ROMs without an ODM partner.
- bubblethink 7mo ago
  Do you mean to say that postmarketOS is somehow better on non Pixel devices? I would assume that Pixels are closest to upstream and have the longest software support life in Android world.
  - opan 7mo ago
    pmOS runs well on a couple OnePlus phones (6, 6T). For whatever reason the Snapdragon 845 and 865 have decent mainline support. I expect the OnePlus 8T to join the prior list of phones in the near future. You can similarly look at which gaming handhelds are supported by ROCKNIX and what SoC they use to get an idea for which ARM SoCs have decent mainline support. I expect the vast majority of phones and other ARM devices to not be very well-supported. RockChip is usually the safest bet, but I've been pleasantly surprised with some Snapdragon stuff.
gchamonlive 7mo ago
Does pixel support alternate OSes or it just doesn't get in the way of custom firmware developers? And for the gaming aspect, there is a huge market for mobile gaming, specially in Asia, so having a manufacturer like Motorola adopting GrapheneOS as a first class citizen will improve the chances that high performance applications will have better performance in such OSes which is a big win.