My guess is that this is a great way for them to standout, fill a niche, and get tons of free advertisements in order to gain back some of their Android market share.

Motorola has effectively lost in the Android market and are on downward spiral into irrelevance (already there?), so they have to do something different.

Add to that existing grapheneos users at best only care about good enough performance and a good camera, the selling feature is security and so a lot less overhead to market such a phone. Those who want the latest features will continue to buy pixels, Samsung, and iphones. The only thing I feel is missing from the picture at a quick glance is a tablet for the few who want a secure tablet device.