It is not recommended over vastly more sane alternatives like Accrescent and getting apps directly from their respective developers (as signed by them) given you have an update mechanism of your own (or the app embeds one) and a manner of verifying the app's public signing key's provenance as something actually belonging to the developers you got said app from (where the former is a proper app store in construction and the latter is nigh impossible to perform cleanly due to typical developer non-cooperation). Nonetheless, Play Store ranks below these two for a third-party app source as it engages in weird practices like Play App Signing, etc. Users are not advised to get Play Store apps from non-Play Store app sources because Play Store already ranks the furthest behind, meaning nothing is recommended beyond it.

Aurora Store is recommendable in exceptional cases, namely when an app can't be downloaded from Google Play due to Play Integrity gating on the app's store listing, but which is known to work (eg. not perform Play Integrity checks itself in the intended manner, etc) after somehow downloaded and installed.

Although as you can verify, this recommended app source ladder is pushed on social media and official chat platform community spaces of GrapheneOS, not the website.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49971519

On that last note, they have been looking for an OEM partner for a long time, and as of the last couple years, were thinking of commissioning an ODM for a supported device. A massive spending of resources but a necessary one since far before that, but that became more pressing two years ago. An OEM partnership is far more favorable, and that is what has been struck with Motorola, who approached GrapheneOS for said partnership and not the other way around.

Embargoed ASB patches started being used in release 2025092500, but I can't find now the message where a Motorola employee (confirmed by a community moderator, spring-onion, in a Side of Burritos interview) first reached out publicly on the GrapheneOS Discord guild about how to obtain further technical guidance than the requirements list in the website which claims to be non-exhaustive, in order to confirm such message's date. Still, GrapheneOS claims (after the partnership announcement March this year) that ASB patches are provided by (effectively) a distinct undisclosed OEM, really meaning an employee is leaking them. Maybe even the person didn't disclose the OEM they work for but they must be associated to one in order to have access to this material.

I'm more worried about the lack of a police to take apps down when it is very clear they should not be there. This is a present problem, presently solvable and that is not acknowledged despite the fact it harms the user.

> https://grapheneos.org/faq#future-devices

A part of the criticism of Fairphone is exactly that they aren't even particularly sustainable or repairable, or ethical, have you read the posts. So there is no choice, not between the two groups you presented as opposing. They aren't even opposing each other as currently Pixels stand as fairly easy to repair and source some genuine parts for via Google's official iFixIt partnership.

An OEM reads the link above and gets the ball rolling as it should, privately, which was what Motorola did after showing up on the public Discord guild with an employee asking for further directions, but being aware of the linked resource already. Obviously GrapheneOS' merit is provably the product and the values it represents, not posts on social media (how could that make sense?). Think of that and how this one-sided criticism of "you should do that to avoid a certain image and get things done" of yours makes no sense either - it didn't scare anyone who would ever: currently only Motorola.

Edit: adding to the last point, the same applies to Fairphone but inversely, where they portray themselves as things they are not (sustainable, specially repairable, ethical, even privacy-respecting). Whereas a takeaway from your comment is that GrapheneOS is good but has a negative image (a false premise, in my opinion), Fairphone puts a lot of *effort* to construct a good image that signals the inverse of what they are. Effort ultimately signals intention.