Yeah, I am fully onboard with the reasoning for why people hate calls and prefer messaging (sync vs. async), but the passage you quoted describes something that

Yeah, I am fully onboard with the reasoning for why people hate calls and prefer messaging (sync vs. async), but the passage you quoted describes something that is straight up wrong on human level. They give you their unlocked device for a specific task of entering your phone number, which already implies a high level of trust, and you instantly break that trust by unsolicitedly installing software on their device? That sounds like a quick way to lose your connection to that person. I know I wouldn't want to have any further interaction with the person who breaks my trust right at the beginning by going out of their way and sneakily installing software on my device. Especially since they aren't a close friend of mine to begin with, because if they were a close friend, we would have each other's phone numbers already.