In the long term, yes it would be better if it shipped.

However, if someone went to a phone store with a stock graphene on display and anything else next to it, which one do you think they'll choose?

Until Graphene's stock experience (i.e stock apps and launcher) mature enough to not look out of place next to google and apple, the average Joe will pick the more polished phone. I hope improving that is a task Motorola will be able to help with, while graphene keeps doing their thing.

Additionally with the app/play store dualopoly, Motorola would be shooting them selves in the foot if they didn't ship with the play store.

Getting an option beside a pixel for Grapheneos is pretty cool and a big step forward. I hope new demand will be high enough to show the decision makers that its an endeavor worth continuing.

I believe the play services agreement Motorola signs to get the play store on their devices would forbid that.

It wouldn't go away. It will only go away if Google signs grapheneos images. Grapheneos on all supported devices support the required attestation already. It is just Google pettiness.

Yes sure. I was merely commenting on the misunderstanding surrounding this.

It's gonna be a premium for the folding feature or some other feature on that particular model

they list two other models that are considerably less expensive and have the same amount of RAM.

Functional and hypothetical only example usage of a curated digital footprint, for story purposes:

You keep, use, maintain, and preferably daily drive technology interfacing gizmos in a manner that results in a footprint where the conclusions drawn from it resolve to a "curated" set of... whatever the beholder is looking to ID from the footprint.

Functional example:

You keep and use devices in a manner that is at most "normie+".

You own a Pixel Phone but keep stock android on it and add just enough to it not make you hate your life. You use a couple of normal sub services.

You still show some of your silly, like use an account on a porn website that federates with the world you care to socialize with. You still post how The Man better watch out.

Same as everyone else. The fingerprint looks like what you want it to look like.

So that it remains separate from what could happen/be happening elsewhere inside a Faraday cage with other devices there. How they are configured like, or who they talk to, the networks you utilize and the level of silly you display in your other accounts that have never so much as shared a trace route in passing together.

That's hypothetically separate from the curated digital identity, depending on how careful and good at it your set up was.

So when the friendly folks with the mass surveillance pull up your file, it's composed of what you wanted there to begin with.

It's just another implementation layer of minimizing and compartmentalization, really.

Hypothetically. For a friend.

Having no footprint is as obvious as having a unique one. It's easier to hide in the crowd.

idk if this is the case here but on a firmware level, interfacing with these camera chips almost always requires an NDA that they'll only sign with very large minimum orders