this post was submitted on 04 Mar 2026
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Hopefully this initiative sticks, sounds like my next phone (eventually) might just be Motorola/Graphene.
Historically, the problem with Motorola hasn't been their os, it's been their hardware, it's just usually not very good when compared to the competition. And often the price is higher for what you're getting.
I grant that Motorola may neglect to go top of the line (e.g. there's no 'flagship grade' non-folding phone on offer right now), but price wise, at least in the US, it seems to be in line with other options and the cheaper options are generally motorola.
Is this US or elsewhere? What are the better value competition in the mid-lower range.
As long as they have basic shit like NFC or wireless charging. One of the main reasons I stopped buying them. 2nd was the tablet sized screens.
Motorola was kind of sluggish/selective about those, but they seem to pretty consistently have those features now. Always worth double checking.
Because its grapheneos you will likely have NFC, but whether you have tap-for-payment options will be a crapshoot, especially in North America, unless having an official vendor changes things with grapheneos's play store integrity issue (which is doubtful).
I never realized you could have NFC and not tap-for-payment support. Is that not how tap-for-payment works?
The apps that enable tap-for-payment ask your bank for permission and some security details to activate using cards for NFC.
In North America, banks won't give that permission/security info to any android app but google pay, and only if the play store verification thing says the OS is fully secure - and google pretends grapheneos doesn't hit those security metrics.
So yes, NFC is how tap-for-payment works, but unless NA banks implement it themselves, or trust a 3rd party that isn't google to implement it, grapheneos phones are blocked from using the tap-for-payment functionality.
That's... Fucking stupid. But it's to be expected from greedy, overly powerful tech corporations I suppose.
NFC is just the technology that tap for payment uses, but there are other use cases for it.
Tap to pay is whatever but I do use NFC for some home automatons.
What you use for home automation if you're into open source and security?
I use the term home automation loosely. Mostly I use it for initiating Tasker scripts at home with a single tap.
Do you have tasker on grapheneOS?
I can't imagine grapheneos shipping on a phone without NFC.
...I wish I had the money to play with homeassistant for random things.
I quite like my Razr. I'm sure if they're aiming to be a true alternative to the mainstream OSs, they'll be including many of the mainstream features
I'm skeptical they will bother with the Razr, seems like a lot of work to intelligently use that external screen and Graphene probably doesn't have the interest to do that. Would be happy to be proven wrong.
I think they supported the pixel fold which has the same sort of second flippy screen thing. I think the multiple screen stuff is just in the aosp base.
I'm old school, I remember when NFC was used for stuff like domotics
One of the largest complaints of Pixels I've seen is that they're too expensive. These will cost twice as much.
I don't think I have ever heard that for the a series. That if fact, I have always heard that it is just about the best price-value on the market, the downside being that it is google and no SD card slot (which is common now). They use the flagship chip in it still, right?
What? When I was buying my last phone prev gen Pixel cost me 1/3 of what I would have to pay for a Fairphone. It's the exact opposite, less popular phones with long support are way too expensive compared to Pixel.
I agree, and yet that is the complaint I hear over and over. I don't understand it, but it is.