Why didn't you use a sms to email forwarding app on a phone connected to a charger?

They are free on play store and work really well.

That one needs to do this to work around the limitations solidifies in my mind that SMS is a poor 2FA solution and should be discontinued.

If you're using a password manager and have a security model that includes trusting your own computer, you really don't want the snake oil. In fact with US bank accounts, "2FA" steps make your account less secure, because the security of your bank account ultimately relies on checking your transactions every 30 days - anything that gets in the way of easily logging in undermines that.

So much this, for Europe as well. Since PSD2, i cannot automatically check my bank account anymore, because of onerous and braindead 2FA requirements. And most banks do not offer a email-on-withdrawal function in any proper fashion, even their apps require regular reauthentication. But, since it is a braindead directive, you can install the 2FA app on the same phone as the bank app and have them talk to each other, thereby killing all the security benefit while still being annoying and non-automatic.

You can read and write messages from the comfy keyboard of your Windows/MacOS/Linux laptop, even if your phone is at the other side of the world, as long as both are connected to internet.

As someone who forgets his phone regularly at home, it's great.

It is a steaming hot pile of garbage where the government has yet again decided to not use a widely accepted standard.

But if you just need to login to myGov every few months to check something or do your tax return it works better then the SMS

(Just don't lose the phone it is installed on, because you can't link it to a new one without ringing and wading through security checks)

I really wish I could root it or install a new OS on it, but the former has failed and even with an unlocked bootloader the latter takes much too much effort if a prebuilt image isn’t available for your specific device, which roughly means “if you don’t have a flagship phone”.

That said if you're out of the country a lot and going the SMS auth route, I'd personally be more comfortable with a postpaid plan in AUS for the SIM as the telcos tend to take ID requirements more seriously for those then pre-paids and you're less likely to be socially engineered out of your number.

I said prepaid, but as I did it it’s actually postpaid but with an initial $10 prepayment required. Ah, good times back in 2014–2017, getting those bills for less than a dollar (commonly 12¢) every quarter. Then I moved to a tiny country town where an Optus tower a few hundred metres away became my best option for internet, 50/25Mbps and far more solid than any NBN anecdote I’ve heard.

In this case I think Android 5 was 2014, so almost 7 years old a this point.

Amaysim are pretty good, Though if you can convince them to add a security note to your account its worth it (Colleague of mine had his mobile number hijacked while on holiday and they used it to access a few of his online accounts)

Well, Android 5.1 was EOL in 2015, so you willingly bought an unsupported model. I'm not saying Android has any sensible long-term support (in fact, I spent the last weekend installing LineageOS because my 2018 phone doesn't have support anymore), but this instance is hardly Google's fault.

I think most people on HN are comfortable doing a bit of research to see when a device will stop receiving support, but I don't think that's reasonable to expect from everyone.

If I walk into a shop and buy a phone, new in the box, it seems pretty reasonable to assume that it's operating system will work with whatever apps I install from it's built in store, and that it will receive security patches for at least a few years. That seems to me like a pretty low bar, but it's absolutely not the case in the Android ecosystem.