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.