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GrapheneOS Is Finally Getting Hardware Designed for GrapheneOS
Joshua MorrisGrapheneOS says Motorola is actively porting GrapheneOS to future devices, with official support expected on Motorola flagships in 2027. This is a huge deal for GrapheneOS.
Until now, officially supported GrapheneOS phones have effectively meant buying a Google Pixel — not because GrapheneOS only wanted Pixels, but because its hardware requirements are unusually strict, and other manufacturers have not provided the combination of hardware security, firmware updates, and support for alternative operating systems it requires. Motorola is taking the opposite approach: instead of asking GrapheneOS to support existing Motorola hardware, Motorola is changing future hardware so GrapheneOS can support it properly.
Motorola announced the long-term partnership at Mobile World Congress in March. GrapheneOS has been more specific: the first supported devices are expected to be 2027 flagships similar to the current Motorola Signature, razr fold, and razr ultra, because those future models are expected to meet its update and hardware memory-tagging requirements. Motorola has not formally announced those 2027 product names yet, so I would treat the exact lineup as GrapheneOS's expectation rather than a finished product announcement.
GrapheneOS does not consider "you can flash another ROM" sufficient. Its requirements include hardware memory tagging; verified boot with rollback protection; a hardware-backed StrongBox keystore; hardware key attestation; isolated radio components; A/B updates; long-term firmware and driver security updates; hardware-level USB data controls; and full hardware security while running an alternative OS. GrapheneOS says there is substantial work bringing production-quality memory tagging from Google's Tensor to Snapdragon, and that it is working with both Motorola and Qualcomm. The current Signature still does not satisfy all requirements — particularly memory tagging — which is why the project is waiting for 2027 rather than weakening its standards. That is exactly what I want to see.
GrapheneOS also gets something it has never really had: a hardware manufacturer willing to work with it. The Motorola devices are expected to support unlocking and then securely relocking the bootloader with another OS installed, plus cleaner device-support code and the ability to produce hardened firmware and driver builds rather than extracting proprietary components from stock. That could give GrapheneOS influence below Android itself — hardware, firmware, drivers, kernel, and secure element. It also reduces one of the project's biggest structural risks: no longer depending entirely on Google's willingness to keep making Pixels that permit secure alternative operating systems.
Motorola gets something valuable too. It can sell hardware explicitly engineered to support one of the strongest security-focused Android distributions available. The partnership is nonexclusive — GrapheneOS remains free to work with other manufacturers that meet the same standards.
GrapheneOS spent years proving what a hardened Android OS could look like on hardware designed by somebody else. Now a major phone manufacturer is changing its hardware because GrapheneOS told it what a secure phone needs. That is a very different relationship.
Read the latest GrapheneOS update.