It does to a certain audience: the people who care about privacy, security and freedom.

I suspect that as time goes on our numbers will only increase.

My non-technical mother recently texted the family group chat to try to get us to use Signal. The winds are shifting towards privacy in a broader sense than ever before. This type of counter argument ("that doesn't sell [product") is usually a bad argument when the market doesn't offer anything that actually sells on privacy. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Hopefully there's only so many times Meta can suggest some creepy connection you didn't want made before people start valuing privacy

As much as I wish, it is going the other way. Caring about the 3 requires literacy, which in the world of LLM, is one thing that going to be reduced as a whole for human-kind.

Agreed graphene is the only reason I picked up a Pixel. Google phone would have been a no thanks from me otherwise.

Eh, wildcard statements like this. Checked your history and you sure like one-liner hit-and-runs like this one. No substance, just vague opinions.

But to actually answer you properly: Heard of OnePlus? They were niche manufacturers curating to geeks like ourselves at the very beginning and THEY USED CyanogenMod ROM! When it was way, WAY more amateurish than GrapheneOS!

When a market is super saturated, the only way to stand out is to experiment and see if something sticks.

This is going to be a very good experiment and can absolutely sell like hot cakes, especially in Europe if they market it well. We absolutely need an – even semi – independent Android hardware here.

Not that I am expecting any meaningful response from you.

Isn't OnePlus rumored to be on their way out?

At minimum, sales haven't been great, & their upmarket push into becoming a mainstream premium brand hasn't perfectly worked out for them

That brand is 12 y/o and has between 3 and 5% market share, roughly the same as Motorola. Whether or not they make it doesn't matter, what matters is how they started as total amateurs with no brand and a beloved aftermarket ROM and where this got them.

They started (and still are?) as an Oppo spinoff. Very (very) far from 'total amateurs'.

I would very much like something other than a Pixel for GrapheneOS. But let's not get wild expectations based on false pretenses.

Oppo itself released their first smartphone in 2011. So not total amateurs, you're right on that, but it was no Apple or Samsung or HTC. They managed to appeal to geeks and started a niche brand that went mainstream.

Market share declining albeit slowly, customer opinions of each device release declining over time as well & they are generally on the more expensive end of the phone market.

Most of the tech enthusiasts who helped them kick off by buying for modding like cyanogen don't go near them now.

They used to be my recommendation to non technical friends and I doubt that I am the only one who long ago changed to other recommendations.

The company needs to revisit their roots in my opinion.

Nice ad hominems, good job.

It's the same deal with small phones. Everyone thinks they're a great idea, then when they actually release them no one buys them. You can't plan your products based on what a small group of users want.

I use Graphene myself and I think it's great but this idea that it's something the average user is clamoring for is just fiction.

It does and increasingly will. I've got my non techiterate friends and famkly getting quite concerned about privacy and de-googling. This is something that would on some level be appealing to all. Even if they cannot appreciarw the full depth. Hell, android enjoyed much love because of open it was. Now that google has decided to put an end to that, so too does end android love.

I doubt that more than 5% of the population knows what open source means.

Less than 5% of the population knew what it meant to install an app when the iPhone launched. I believe Steve Ballmer ridiculed the idea when asked about it.

A great many amount of people use Android to this day because of its more open nature, and that's despite Google's involvement. If Motorola could go back to its native roots, shake the idea of Chinese influence, and do open source proper, I bet there's a lot more than 5% of the market ready for it.

Well 5% of a massive addressable market it itself quite a lot.

Try "aware, even vaguely, of the privacy issues standard smartphones pose".

(I would bet more than 5% have at least a vague notion of open source though, and a positive a priori - also possibly mixing it with source-available, which would be on par with some people we can read on HN)

It doesn't matter how many know what open source means - they all use it in some manner after all.

Take away open source and there would barely be a large tech company left standing.

I'm not arguing against that, I'm just saying that open source labelling isn't a feature to users.

The downstream effects of something being open source might acquire users, but being open source in of itself doesn't do anything except for a very tiny slice of the population. I'd say (in the US) more than half of the software developers I know use an Apple phone despite Android being much more open.

Whenever I'm on HN I feel like most of the posters here live in a bubble where they think most people are anywhere near as tech literate as they are. (You can really feel how this forum is SF-coded).

> open source labelling isn't a feature to users

> The downstream effects of something being open source might acquire users

So labeling means nothing, but open-source is important to users. See also: enshittification.