1) An unmodified iPhone SE (2022 model) with OS support until 2032. This runs all my authentication, banking, health, etc. It is in airplane mode 99% of the time unless I need it.
2) The second is a Pixel 9a with Graphene OS for daily use, routing and internet access.
If I could get away with carrying a tiny device again instead of lugging around a brick I would, but the world has made it as inconvenient as possible not to.
A BlackBerry from 15 years ago weighed just over 100g and did 80% of what your modern-day pocket computer can.
Then they might move somewhere else with different banks and different hardware requirements, they will carry 5 phones.
I remember BlackBerry OS 4.x (?) had a built-in password manager app and this was in the mid-2000s. By comparison this was added to iOS 18 in 2024.
What it wasn't good at was things like games and toxic consumer rich media bullshit. The industry saw dollar signs with iOS and Android and never wrote apps for the ecosystem.
Remember the days when Instagram was iOS-only?
But here we are, resigned to typing on glass for the rest of our lives because some hippie burnout thought it was a good idea.
What makes you think it'll be supported for a decade? Looking at the past models, the support period is around 5-7 years. If you count security updates that might get you to 10 years, but at the 7-9 year mark apps will eventually refuse to update because you're not on the latest ios.
for my smartphone usage, i could still use my iphone se (1° gen) perfectly fine and that would include writing some pieces with garageband; which got deprecated and non-download-able because newer versions weren't aimed to my iOS version. heck the vast majority of smartphones aren't compilling software with local hardware (nor i know why someone would do)... guess we could stop with processing power advancement of 2015 just fine to run Whataspp and Instagram. producing hardware is costly, not everyone has a decent job nor minerals are infinite and have no ecological impact
If they stopped, I think I would seriously consider swapping banks and whatever else instead of using a different OS.
The iPhone SE would be the one I use for calls, SMS, etc. It has the SIM card.
The Pixel 9a would be used for everything I don't need a data plan/SIM card (browsing etc).
My needs are a bit different from yours. I like to separate telephony and communication (i.e. WhatsApp, SMS) from everything else. This way, if I want quiet, I just turn that phone to airplane mode. I really don't want to get random pings while I'm doing "real" stuff on my phone.
Over the years, I've spent far too much time with different solutions for managing notifications, etc. Turns out simply keeping the older phone after buying a newer one was the easiest approach. No downsides so far. The old phone has the SIM card. The new one doesn't.
Also, that's only half of it. I have to move it out of "Do not disturb" at some point. Or set a timeline for it. Why should I when I just don't need to?
Also, it's been years since I used "Do not disturb". Does it show notification icons in the drawer on top? That's a definite no-no.
And with focus modes with location based triggers, you can set it to turn DND on when you get home and it automatically turns off when you leave home.
For example, do most daily transactions at one bank, and keep the rest at another.
This happens a lot in companies and government - you outsource payable operations to different division of government or a contractor. Hire one to do custody of money, another to process disbursements.
https://support.apple.com/guide/security/express-cards-with-...
That's a nice idea. You could have a simple card-shaped device with no screen or buttons, and call that a "credit card".
“Be kind. Don't be snarky.”
“Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”
Like a credit card? They've been around for some time.
Note that the payments are tied to a card/chip but you can (at the moment) buy new card no id/registration required
It was really like digital cash, the money was loaded onto a chip. So if you lost it you lost all the money. There was no pin code either, just like a real wallet. Unfortunately it was not really anonymous because the Dutch government are really into surveillance.
It didn't really last very long, it was only popular for parking machines. In those days 2G was expensive so validating transactions online was rare.
At the same time there was also the Exxon-Mobil Speedpass RFID fob, and I remember there being a huge discussion about “the battle of the keychain” and whose payment instrument would win being on your keys to be used the most alongside your loyalty cards.
I'm thinking a ring type device might be better--put a pulse oximeter into it, you unlock it with your phone, it remains unlocked only so long as it gets basically perfect data from the oximeter, locks if it fails for a second. Thus said robber can neither snatch your ring nor cut off your finger and use it. I like the metal mesh straps that can hold my device very snugly against my skin without being tight and that would be good enough, but a looser strap would not.
Requiring that everyone carry a smartwatch (or other smartwatch-based compute nugget) around to participate in civic life is a bit less onerous than requiring everyone carry around a smartphone; smartwatches are both cheaper and smaller.
And, to me at least, smartwatches are much more of an appliance than a smartphone is. Nobody's really begging to sideload apps onto their smartwatch, or to install an alternate launcher onto them, etc. Smartwatches just kind of "do what they should obviously do given the hardware design and HCI affordances" — kind of like a calculator.
As a bonus, unlike smartphones, most smartwatches to this day still aren't independently connected to cellular networks; so the average wiretapped smartwatch can't be used to surveil your location and activities in quite the same way that a wiretapped smartphone can.
Everytime I have to use a stock phone I'm appalled at the ads and I have absolutely no trust in any US or Chinese manufacturer. So I use them only for banking and digital id because that's presumably not what they actually care about.
It's not that expensive, I think many people have an old Android phone lying around, it doesn't have to be up to date.
In reality, banks couldn’t care less. They only care about checking boxes and don’t consider where these boxes come from; every unchecked box is a risk.
Did the latest sham "security audit" say that root is bad? They'll block it.
For 2 years the voice authentication worked fine (they call me, I type in a number) on my regular rooted phone. Then one random morning I just stopped getting the phone calls. "Network said no".
Complete lock out, nothing I could do except go out and panic-buy an unrooted phone not running Lineage and using a modern Android version. (I tried my older unofficial lineage phones without root, and no dice.)
I opted for a good phone I could postmarket later, but gosh did it set me back almost 1/5 of my monthly salary.
Sometimes when party tickets come online I have to be really quick to buy them for early bird price.
the only way to disable any transmissions is to turn off the device
I used to be under the impression that:
- Airplane Mode via Control Center icon, true.
- Cellular, WiFi, and Bluetooth off, via Settings, not true.
Meaning, if you turn those off specifically, you are not talking to towers or access points or broadcasting a persistent bluetooth ID.
Having Kagi'd a bit just now, maybe the thing that can't be turned off is NFC?
https://www.simplymac.com/ios/can-you-turn-off-nfc-iphone
If that's the case, then I'd hold this as a different threat model than not being able to turn off WiFi and Cellular.
Very curious if an iPhone or iPad with all accessible settings off, including for NFC turning off Apple Pay, NFC tag reading, etc., leaving only this background NFC on, if there are still persistent identifiers being broadcast.
Although, I am still using 17.7.2 that won't stop nagging me to upgrade to iOS 26.2.
I don't want to because I know I'll hate it.
Also found out that the profiles also expire, so you need to update those in order to skip the update nagging. Apple's lolling all the way.
Need? Unless and/or until the ability to log in and do your banking, healthcare, etc. via desktop/laptop goes away, then you don't need a phone to do any of that. Yes, 2FA may be required but in the tangential experience of myself, my partner and my two closest friends, we have multiple 2FA options available to us for our banking/healthcare apps that don't require a smartphone.
I see this point all the time - "You can't bank or do important life stuff without a phone!!!" and it's just, largely, bullshit. I don't do any "important life stuff" on my phone.
Beyond that, even if you had to have a phone to perform those tasks, I'd strongly argue that if you feel you need a second phone, then, and I know this will come off as reductive and unproductive, I think the idea of spending less time on your phone and on the internet, and more time "touching more grass" and interacting with the community and world immediately around you, might apply.
Notably, in Vietnam people use QR payments a lot. If you want to interact with them by, say, paying at a small local restaurant, you’ll need a phone (or a stack of cash, and please do prepare change).
So I don't, actually, need a phone in that instance...
For this to work for me personally, I would need webapps for ride-hailing and preferably food delivery, and to learn how to navigate the city without a map. I think I might be able to pull it off for some of the places I live in.
Theoretically there is a third option with USB ID card reader to use certificate stored in ID card. But I never saw one used in practice. It’s a PITA to get those devices to work on anything beyond Windows. And they’re accepted in relatively few places.
https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...
But nope the cryptobros just turned it into another pyramid speculation scheme and the governments ruined the customer independence with their KYC stuff. Now it's just an online version of the old system where the exchanges are the new banks.
Is it really? £150 on backmarket for a phone which will last 10 years doesn't feel expensive.
Makes sense to me to run any banking on a secure device anyway.
Ps no it's not rooted but it won't pass full play integrity so it will usually be treated as such.
Also, a properly configured root is not a weakness just like having a computer where you don't log in as admin unless you really need to can be just fine.
Cheers, maybe by 2027 unattested devices won't be allowed on the internet. It's not a solution. The problem didn't exist a few years ago, the idea that it will not continue to its inevitable conclusion within a few years without real solutions is laughable.
Wait until Graphene is classified as a hacking tool and Estonia convinces the EU to fine a million Euros a day any company providing services to host its website. Wait until, "in the spirit of reconciliation," the US goes along with it, too.
Wait until unattested desktops aren't allowed on the internet.
On the other hand, France has been undermining privacy for a few years now. They supported Chat Control, have attacked GrapheneOS, etc.
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/12/...
I deliberately avoid all banking apps even though i didn't root my phone, but i have to use Google Pay a lot. So... That's the only reason this phone I'm typing on isn't rooted.
Then you choose the flagship device you're going to use 99% of the time on the basis of how easily you can unlock the bootloader/root.
I run a proxmox server on my home Lan with all the services and storage I want, including a wireguard server. My Android phone can then connect to my home LAN services from anywhere in the world (my ISP provides static public IP addresses).
My Android device is then a simple terminal to all my "stuff". It can be locked down as much as they want it to be, as long as it can run WireGuard. I have no use for a rooted phone. In fact I want it to be as hardened as possible in case of theft.
Most of my banking apps work fine on GrapheneOS, but I've adopted this because I'm confident they'll eventually break. And access to Apple Pay is nice.
Carrying two phones is annoying, but, agency over my main computing device is worth the price.
- I bought the iPhone SE 2022 second-hand for 150 EUR. I think this is a fair price, but it's still expensive given that I leave it lying around 99% of the time, which I still feel is a waste of resources, regardless of my motivation.
- My main reason for having two phones is pretty simple. I think browsing and daily internet use just don't go together anymore with authentication, banking and health. I also didn't want to carry a critical key to my digital infrastructure around with me every day, especially in bars (etc.). Having a separate phone helps me to treat different aspects of my life differently. No worries, I don't have to carry two phones with me all the time.
- Yes, I do other things to generally reduce my digital footprint: I use different browsers for different things, such as admin work and social media (in those rare cases where I still use it). I also self-host behind VPN and have moved many apps to my internal stack, which gives me better control over what communicates with what. For example, I use WhatsApp Bridge so I don't have to use the app directly on phones anymore. I self-host Invidious with privacy-redirect for Fennec for YouTube, etc. Over time, all of this has slowly helped me regain my freedom, and it actually feels liberating.
- My path may not be your path.
The Coming War on General Purpose Computation
https://boingboing.net/2011/12/27/the-coming-war-on-general-...
unrelated to phones a lot of (more professional) malware has moved to not persist itself in root space (or at all) as to not leaf traces (instead it will just rely on being able to regain root access as needed every time you reboot with all the juicy parts being in memory only (as in how often do you even roboot your phone))
I think (but am not fully sure) this also applies to phone malware.
I.e. no it doesn't work.
Not unless you
- ban usage of all old phone (which don't get security updates)
- ban usage of all cheap phones/phones with non reliable vendors
- have CHERY like protections in all phones and in general somehow magically have no reliable root privilege escalations anymore
Oh and advanced toolkits sometimes skip the root level persistence and directly go into firmware parts of all kinds.
Furthermore proper 2FA is what is supposed to make online banking secure, not make pretend 2FA where both factors are on the same device (your phone).
And even without proper 2FA, it is fully sufficient to e.g. classify rooted phones as higher risk and limit how much money can be transmitted/handled with it (the limit should ignoring ongoing long term automated repeated transactions, like rent).
There really is no reason to ban it.
I stopped using banking apps on my phones a few years ago - they got more and more annoying, and I don't buy into the "the device is secure and should be used as a trust token". So I'm now back to banking only on my computer, with a hardware token for TAN generation.
They don't really like you using that and keep annoying you to stop doing that, but I don't think they'll fully get rid of that - those are filling some accessibility niches as well.
And I have no idea why, but no bank offers photoTAN devices in my country. They seem like an interesting concept, even though I imagine the underlying hardware isn't far from that of a phone, in the end.
Sparkassen: https://www.sparkassen-shop.de/home/shop/tan-generatoren,375...
Previously there were also so called "flicker TAN" approaches: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transaktionsnummer#chipTAN_com...
The old, standard RSA number generator token key ring device is not permitted in Europe for authorizing bank actions ?
The requirement is called "dynamic linking" (the 2FA code must be tied to the specific transaction) and the relevant regulation is PSD2.
I only know of a single bank using this.
If it's not Crédit Mutuel then you now know of a second bank using this method.
Meanwhile, the last hope is that people will use more cash (if the digital world is too hostile, oh wait it is!)
Here in the US, I still get checks frequently enough that it's nice to have.
I only used them twice in my life, last one was in 2012 and I had to get a supervisor at the bank to find the procedure to get a checkbook at the time.
I do own a home but find that almost everything can be paid online now. I write just a few paper checks per year. Even my taxes I pay on the state or IRS website (with ECH, so effectively a check but without the paper).
I only have to do this rarely, and it’s always because the recipient wants to charge a “convenience fee” for having me pay with ACH or debit card or credit card. (The seller is assuming people would rather pay an extra $3 to $5 to not have to write a check or mail anything).
I don't think I've seen one of those since the early 90s. Do people still use them?
I'm essentially along for the ride because the masses will gobble it up.
I grew up in a world where personal computers weren't strange things (the 1980s). I remember reading Levy's "Hackers" in my teens and not comprehending how people could think personal computers were such a big deal. The talk about "technical priesthoods" and mainframes, the inaccessibility of computers to "normal people", etc, didn't mean anything to me.
Now that I'm living through the twilight of the personal computer I understand.
Money is speech, and speech builds political power. Industry lobbies have vastly more money than the minuscule number of people to whom this matters.
On top of that, the market doesn't want general purpose computers. The market wants TikTok terminals and selfie cams. The market wants "content consumption", "AI slop", and "influencers".
If there's no market for what I want it doesn't matter if it's legislated out of existence or not. Nobody will build it if nobody will buy it.
Then there's the apologists for big tech who cry "But they're not computers, they're phones!" when the fact is brought up that we're all carrying general purpose supercomputers bristling with sensors and radios in our pockets but we're not allowed to own them or use them for what we want. (Cue sob stories about clearing malware from oldsters' computers in 3... 2... 1...)
Technologists (who I'd argue should want general purpose computing in the hands of the masses) can't make any money re-architecting the OS and application metaphors and paradigms that give rise to the malware-laden cesspools of end users PCs so they just direct their efforts to working at big tech building the walled-garden prisons that we're all going to be forced into.
It's hard not to feel like I have to accept this fate.
all they really need to do is to make the Internet inaccessible from any device except the castrated thin clients that our computers are doomed to be replaced with. and that can be done trivially.
Outdated but signed ROM with tons of unfixed CVEs will be still considered totally fine.
Latets Lineage OS or Graphene OS will be rejected.
Doesn't stop state approved malware in all its forms.
That has been the model since day one, since you are using spectrum that, because the end users are not licensed, requires it. Radios in 100% of commercially available phones are locked to prevent user tampering.
You don't get root on your debit card either, despite it running a computer.
Why, then, can users be root on PCs that have wifi cards, SDRs or cellular radios?
SDRs? Because they are not certified transmitters. They are test RF gear, or a component of a transmitter, not an end-user product.
Cellular radios in a PC? You don't get root on those. Same situation as they are in a cell phone: They are licensed-band transmitters, and they are required to be tamper proof to protect the licensee.
The original post said:
> Locking down the bootloader and enforcing TEE signatures does stop malware. But it also kills user agency. We are moving to a model where the user is considered the adversary on their own hardware. The genius of the modders in that XDA thread is undeniable, but they are fighting a war against the fundamental architecture of modern trust and the architecture is winning.
So, as I read it, Fiveplus is saying that we are moving to an architecture where the user is an adversary on the computer (the phone) as a whole. While licenses may require that specific components are out of bounds, the new thing is that the whole platform is denying the user the ability to do what they want with the parts that are not explicitly off-limits.
IIRC, a Blu-Ray drive is required to store data about revoked keys and to stop playing discs if its own key is revoked. Presumably the BR license also states that the user can't be allowed to wipe this revocation list and start playing Blu-Rays again. But BR drives can still be fitted in computers where the user has root access, just like PC cellular radios.
Phones are made to be default-deny instead of default-allow, and I think that makes it different from "enclosed modules you don't have control of".
As of November 2023, zero applications are licensed and capable of playing UHD Blu-Ray disks [0], and PC manufacturers are just not including the hardware necessary to do so.
0: https://www.cyberlink.com/support-center/faq/content?id=2834...
Even as a licensed ham it's getting increasingly difficult to even get hardware that allows utilization of frequencies I'm duly licensed to transmit on in the 2.4 GHz band. Short of building and designing your own transmitters it's become impossible to repurpose hardware like it was before. Our club has aging M2 Rockets from Unifi that were modified for this use that are now decaying and dying. It's unfortunate too because once these stop working that's it. A few club members have been championing GLiNET but same problems. They are relying on older models which weren't as locked down and already show signs of suffering the same fate as the Rockets.
I think we’ve been there at least since the first iPhone, and it’s now entirely normalized for the average user.
I have no idea about the kind of malware you're talking about.
This totally beats the purpose of owning or using tech. Might as well go off grid and live a non-tech life.
Big tech wants to colonize our hardware completely because data centers alone ain't cutting it.
1$ Trillion has to be paid back to the investors plus interests. They screwed up with AI and we have to pay for it. Or maybe they didn't screw up because big money always gets bailed out by the plebs.
This is lazy control.
> The irrefutable part here is that the security model works.
Yes! And that business model should be allowed.
This leads me to worry the notion of "user agency" may be misplaced, meaning, aimed at the wrong level of the stack. It would seem both open (general compute ethos) and secure devices (appliance ethos) have a right to be in the market. So…
### Perhaps user agency should be at the experience level. ###
We couldn't plug Sega Genesis cartridges into Nintendo 64. We understand this about consoles. If we remap mobile devices into consoles, it seems less obvious their internals should be opened and tinkered with by end users.
User agency seems more at the level of picking a console family, and it's often for the whole brand aura including both the console itself and safeness-to-permissiveness dial by which the brand curates its the cartridges (spectrum from Nintendo to Apple to Sony to Microsoft and Steam). A free market for mobile devices or desktops would likely sort out a similar spectrum of just-works to fidget-able. If you choose the Nintendo 64, you wouldn't expect to run arbitrary software on it as you would expect on Dell.
We hackers are capable of figuring out how to make Nintendo 64 software; our neighbor does not need or want those affordances, they want just works, no headaches. This idea that the user must be able to open their digital watch or toaster oven and change how it is wired glosses what users actually choose: the conveniently toasted meal.
At the same time, business models around the curation and appliancification of digital tools, blurring the lines from hardware through solid state through firmware to software into a single product users can choose, must be defended.
If I want to dev for a secure product, I similarly must be OK opting into the supply chain security model (with Apple, registering as a dev in order to exchange cert material and bypass consumer paths to loading software I'm making for the platform) that allows that product to be secure, and opted into by users with money to buy my app, that caused me to want to develop for it in the first place.
Users must have a right to buy an appliance that isn't fiddle-able. Not mandated to, as this article sounds, but allowed to as the EU is trying to deny. Such products have a right to exist, and such business models have a right to exist.
And then, user agency remains as simple as use dollars to buy a product offered through a biz model that matches the user's goals, rather than regulate to disable business offerings offerings/products that don't, and developer agency is to pour energy into the platform that aligns with one's ethos.
If more money is to be made on a platform with a different ethos, perhaps it's worth reflection rather than rants.
The only solution is to force some semblance of user agency on those models, such that the vendor isn’t imposing from above.
Not that it excuses the withdrawal of user agency. But I've never used a banking app on my phone before. Anything important I still like to do on a desktop.
Though how much longer that's safe, who knows. Apple's model of requiring their permission to run code on your own device will probably spread to everything given enough time.
I guess you could take your laptop out at the restaurant and in the taxi to pay. It seems a little strange. You might better just use a browser on the smartphone instead of the mobile app.
Here in Europe, good luck using any form of online payment without one due to 2FA requirements.
A lot of banks require using their banking app to get a 2FA token to log-in on a desktop web browser.
The irrefutable part here is that the security model works. Locking down the bootloader and enforcing TEE signatures does stop malware. But it also kills user agency. We are moving to a model where the user is considered the adversary on their own hardware. The genius of the modders in that XDA thread is undeniable, but they are fighting a war against the fundamental architecture of modern trust and the architecture is winning.