GrapheneOS has confirmed that Motorola’s upcoming Signature 27 will become the first Motorola phone supported by the privacy-focused Android operating system. The project said more time is needed before it publishes its full announcement, so details about the port and support timeline have not yet been released.

The confirmation follows GrapheneOS’s partnership with Motorola announced in March. It also marks a major change for the Android fork, which has so far supported only Google Pixel phones because of its strict hardware and security requirements.

Why the Motorola support matters

GrapheneOS does not support every Android phone. The project evaluates hardware features that it considers important for security, and devices that lack a required capability may not receive an official port.

At present, the supported device range covers Google’s Pixel 6 through Pixel 10 families, including the corresponding A-series models. The Signature 27 would therefore become the first supported phone from a different manufacturer.

GrapheneOS also changes how Google software works on compatible devices. Google Play services can be installed inside a sandbox, allowing many standard Android applications to continue working while giving users more control over the services and permissions those apps receive.

Signature 27 hardware and security features

The Motorola Signature 27 has not been fully unveiled, but the available details point to a high-end phone. It is expected to use Qualcomm’s Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 platform, which supports Arm’s Memory Tagging Extension, or MTE.

MTE is designed to help detect certain memory-safety bugs. GrapheneOS considers the feature important enough that its availability can affect whether a device qualifies for support.

The project’s comments about MTE also help explain uncertainty around Google’s Pixel 11 models. Although the Tensor G6 reportedly supports MTE, the feature was disabled in hardware, creating questions about whether those phones would meet GrapheneOS’s requirements.

Other reported Signature 27 specifications include a 50-megapixel main camera using Sony’s 1/1.28-inch Lytia 910 sensor and a 200-megapixel periscope camera. The phone is also expected to include a speaker system developed with Bang & Olufsen and receive seven years of operating system updates.

More Motorola phones could follow

GrapheneOS has indicated that additional Motorola devices may eventually join the supported lineup, but it has not identified those models. Each phone will need to meet the project’s security standards rather than qualify simply because it belongs to the same product family.

The Signature 27’s official GrapheneOS announcement should clarify when support will arrive, which software features will be available at launch and whether the phone will be sold with an installation path designed for the alternative operating system.