Maybe it is an exception? I'm in EU if that matters.
And Motorola is almost free of bloatware. It is practically a stock Android.
The ThinkPhone is an exception, yeah. It’s similar to older Android One phones like their Moto X4. Not different because you are in EU, US models get same treatment.
The razr and edge lines do not get as reliable monthly updates and ship with bloatware.
My girlfriend had one of the Moto Play models from 2020 and it was horrific. Is their Android setup really any better these days?
So no, I don't think that's a small amount of risk, even if there's billions of Android users in the wild.
Especially considering how much money can be stolen from peoples bank accounts
67% of android users in 2025 did not get their banking credentials stolen.
> In Q2 2025, the number of attacks involving malware, adware, and unwanted software decreased compared to Q1.
https://securelist.com/malware-report-q2-2025-mobile-statist...
Windows XP had an audio recording app and most people didn't even have microphones. Now we have smartphones that don't have a way to record audio as a file or even write text notes built into the system, forcing you to use third-party tools that can be maliscious.
It is true that at certain points I have bought brand new Android phones that did not come with such basic utilities, including utilities that bargain priced feature phones were expected to have, like a sound recorder.
IIRC, the Droid Turbo 2 I got in 2016ish came with Android 2 and did not come with a sound recording app stock. It also did not have a file browser stock. This was a Flagship product. The flashlight was not included for long enough for the top ten app, a flashlight app, to be on a significant quantity of android phones and end up being a data harvesting operation.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2013/12/...
Honestly, I do regret not having given them iPhones when they still had the cognitive ability to learn new user interfaces. iOS UI, on its most basic, default form, has remained stable except for cosmetic changes and the move away from the home button. Also UI is generally quite consistent between apps. Android on the other hand, keeps changing and varies wildly depending on the manufacturer and generation.
Now it's too late for them to learn new UI paradigms, so I'm stuck with near-vanilla Android flavours.
So with them partnering up with graphene, I am super excited too. Motorola phones are also pretty price effective imo for the quality of hardware.
Aside from that, we'll have a lot more access to the code for firmware, etc. and ability to do hardening below the OS layer through the partnership with Motorola and their partnership with Qualcomm.
Nitpick, but it’s just ‘blob’ as in ‘a big blob of bytes’. It’s not an acronym or abbreviation for anything :)
Edit: and I'm not btw - for all I know BLOB in DB land might be backronym from blob in the common usage.
From a phone by a Chinese company.
Unless GrapheneOS handles the radio firmware, not really interested.
In both cases it's something closed and the government has shown overreach. (Yes, China a lot more than the US, but still ... things are not looking good a the moment. And I have no more trust, even if the political direction changes for a presidency period or two.)
But yes, ultimately we want open source firmware. Still, then there could be hardware backdoors anyways ...
And there are indeed issues.
Yet these issues are perhaps 1 foot high, and the issues with China and PRC's interference in domestic corporations, reaches to the moon.
There's literally no comparison. Even now.
Don't remember that at the moment, it should be one of the requirements they list under "future hardware" In the FAQ.
Pepperidge Farm remembers owning a first-gen Moto X on Verizon and waiting over a year+ for the Android 5.0 update, getting abandoned on the first-generation Moto 360 smartwatch (not even getting Android Wear 1.6), and getting abandoned on the first-gen Moto Hint earbud (not getting promised features with the first-gen Moto X).