7 ms·

Ultimately, I don't think the most important challenge is in binary firmware blobs, but the software which people depend upon to run their lives. What does it m

• endgame 1y ago
  It becomes much harder to force attestation on people if there's a significant user base that runs alternative operating systems.
  • bombcar 1y ago
    Do you really NEED to be forced to attest if you can make your phone look like any damn PC using a browser?
    • kube-system 1y ago
      I can’t tap my PC to buy a burrito at Chipotle.
      • ray_v 1y ago
        This sounds like a challenge to me.
        • bitmasher9 1y ago
          It’s actually super easy and not a challenge. The lowest tech way to do it would be the tape a cc with tap functionality to the inside of a laptop.
          • deleted 1y ago
            [deleted]
          • hn_user82179 1y ago
            what a phenomenal comment, thank you for the laugh
        • bombcar 1y ago
          I took "tap to pay" being clicking on Order in an app; and I have certainly made a "online order" from inside the Chipotle, on their wifi with my laptop (usually because walking to the counter would cost more because of stupid promotions). It makes more sense that they're referring to Apple Pay or similar shenanigans (which itself is more annoying than a credit card, to be honest, Face ID goes wrong or the double click closes the wallet app instead of authenticating way too many times, especially if you're trying to do it one-handed).
      • hdseggbj 1y ago
        So you pay more money and also give up your privacy for what you could pay cash for. I don't think you're the target market for this phone.
        • kube-system 1y ago
          I pay less money for my burrito than I would with cash, but the reason I use my phone is convenience, not cost. > I don't think you're the target market for this phone. My comment is downstream of the entertaining of a possibility of: > a significant user base that runs alternative operating systems ... which isn't going to happen if you ask your users to give up commonly used features. It will forever be a niche project, at best.
          • hdseggbj 1y ago
            And there are still folks who don't use ad blockers.
      • deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      • drnick1 1y ago
        You seem to be part of the problem. As long as people like you are happy to run spyware on their phones for the sake of convenience or a meager discount, companies will be empowered to make such software and devices a requirement.
        • austhrow743 1y ago
          Do you think the same for using credit cards in general or is using the phone somehow worse?
          • drnick1 1y ago
            I use cash whenever possible, but carrying cash for larger transactions has its own risks and those risks need to be balanced against the privacy benefits it offers. The way I see it, carrying a credit card in addition to my phone when I might need it is a minor inconvenience relative to that of allowing Google complete control over my phone.
          • bombcar 1y ago
            Credit cards have become mainly a way for the banks and visa/mc to use the customer to strong arm money out of the business. Get 3% and rebate some to the customer. For the convenience. It’s kind of sad, really.
            • warkdarrior 1y ago
              I am all in favor of ways to strong-arm money out of businesses --- they seem to be doing quite well at the expense of customers.
      • NoGravitas 1y ago
        I can tap my debit card to buy a burrito, no apps required on my end.
    • jojobas 1y ago
      Some banks require app confirmation for PC-initiated transactions, using play integrity requiring apps. Cause security, you know.
      • SchemaLoad 1y ago
        It's because it's way easier to install malware on PC than mobile. None of us are immune either. In recent times there has been malware distributed by common NPM packages as well as game mods. Every NPM package you install has the ability to steal your browser session tokens and the only thing stopping the attacker from actually logging in and spending your money is the fact it has to be confirmed on your phone.
        • jojobas 1y ago
          Choosing between a risk of that and preinstalled non-removable malware in every phone? Tough one, I know.
        • array_key_first 1y ago
          That doesn't require a bank approved app - we already have authentication mechanisms that are standardized. People do proprietary bullshit because they want to do proprietary bullshit. Anything else is made up.
      • koolala 1y ago
        What kind of transactions require this? Normal bank transactions don't, right?
        • jojobas 1y ago
          Transfer of more than a set amount between even your own accounts in different banks.
          • koolala 1y ago
            Between your own accounts is the main use-case because you typically can't transfer between different banks.
    • deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    • SchemaLoad 1y ago
      These days browsers are becoming increasingly distrusted. My bank logs my browser out after 30 minutes inactivity and then to log back in I have to confirm the login on my phone.
      • SoftTalker 1y ago
        This seems desirable? Is your phone the only 2FA available?
      • kennywinker 1y ago
        That… seems reasonable? My bank does that with their website and their mobile app. I was able to setup 2fa using a totp app, so i don’t rely on sms for that part
        • deleted 1y ago
          [deleted]
        • SchemaLoad 1y ago
          It is given the environment. But it does highlight the poor security of desktop browsers where they are only trusted to do anything when a phone app approves it. While the phone app is considered secure enough to just stay logged in perpetually without any external confirmation. To hack the banks app you have to find an exploit in iOS or Android which would allow you to read the other apps private storage, which is borderline impossible now. To hack the banks website you just have to buy some random browser extension and add malware to it, or break into someones NPM account and distribute it there, or any number of ways to run code on someone else's computer. Something very achievable by an individual.
          • thwarted 1y ago
            > But it does highlight the poor security of desktop browsers where they are only trusted to do anything when a phone app approves it. Does it? The browser doesn't do anything, the person sitting at the computer where the browser is running is what performs the actions. The reauthentication and 2fa is meant to authenticate and authorize the user, not the browser. The attack vector of someone else using your phone using an app that doesn't require (re)authentication is independent of the browser or the app itself being trusted. That your bank doesn't periodically require some kind of re-authentication for their app is a security hole, but because the device could fall into the wrong hands, not because the code/app/browser used to access it isn't trusted.
    • wongarsu 1y ago
      My bank doesn't let me do anything in the browser without 2FA, and the only 2FA they offer is their smartphone app. My other bank offers 2FA via chip reader as an alternative. I guess that's somewhat viable for an alternative phone OS, if you want to carry the reader around with you That might just be European banks though
      • seba_dos1 1y ago
        That could be nice on the Librem 5 which has an integrated smartcard reader.
    • pjmlp 1y ago
      Websites are starting to make use of passkeys and TPM stuff on the device for workflows where money is involved.
    • endgame 1y ago
      My bank is migrating online banking to an app-only platform. I could see attestation following very shortly afterwards.
  • bigstrat2003 1y ago
    I agree, but unfortunately I think the chances of that are just about zero. The reality is that the vast, vast majority of people don't care about software freedom. They care about the flashy marketing features in the newest iPhone (and competitors). I wish it were otherwise, but alas. Heck, you can't even get people to care about their physical freedom most of the time, let alone their digital life. It's hard to see this effort taking off as a result.
• inatreecrown2 1y ago
  you have to start somewhere, and with Goggle closing Android to non-approved apps this seems like the right move.
• koolala 1y ago
  In an emergency, can't you call your bank over the phone? Do you depend on it still if you have a Computer?
  • jlokier 1y ago
    No, with some banks you can't. I tried calling Starling Bank in the UK when my phone screen stopped working. I assumed they would have basic phone banking service. They told me no. The only service they could provide over the phone was registering a new device to resume access to bank services via their mobile app. Although they have a web banking service, which can he used on a desktop, that requires authentication via the mobile app too. It's not TOTP, it's their own thing. As I needed to make a transaction, I had no choice but to buy a new phone in a hurry.to do it. Several people suggest switching banks and credit card services, but I've found that not so easy. I have accounts with several banks (some for business), and 3 of them require use of their mobile app. Most credit card services I use also require use of their app. Some have websites that hand you over to the app at some point in the flow.
• monero-xmr 1y ago
  Most importantly is to continue supporting web browser access and open web protocols. Then anyone with a web browser and device can use all the apps.
  • userbinator 1y ago
    Actually "open" is a misnomer, maybe it was a decade ago but it's clear that Big G has an effective monopoly over browser(s), the web "standards", and is gradually making them more user-hostile.
    • array_key_first 1y ago
      It's still significantly more open than any other platform. Believe it or not, Mozilla is not asleep at the wheel, and neither is Apple.
      • scheeseman486 1y ago
        Mozilla is absolutely asleep at the wheel (and have arguably already swerved off the road and hit a tree) and Apple aren't any better than Google in terms of wanting to lock down the web.
      • LoganDark 1y ago
        I use Safari as my daily driver and I'm still routinely shocked at just how terrible certain aspects of the experience is compared to Chrome. For example, the UI seems to completely block for most of the website loading process, rather than streaming as Chrome does. Also, rather than restore the previous state when I swipe to go back, it has to reload the page from scratch. Little things like this continue to annoy me day by day, the primary reason I don't switch to Chrome is because it just doesn't integrate with macOS at all.
        • userbinator 1y ago
          Also, rather than restore the previous state when I swipe to go back, it has to reload the page from scratch I've encountered cases when both behaviours would've been desired (either use the cached version, or the latest version), so I think that's neither a point in favour nor against.
• SoftTalker 1y ago
  Use the website. I’ve never seen a bank where a mobile app is the only option for remote access. If my bank did that, I’d switch banks.
  • ttoinou 1y ago
    They more and more force you into 2FA through banking app
    • kennywinker 1y ago
      Every bank i’ve used (2, so ymmv) allowed 2fa using a totp app, they just don’t make that choice obvious you have to dig around in the settings
      • konimex 1y ago
        Here in SE Asia (in my country at least) you're lucky if they even offer you SMS 2FA (and even then, only for cash withdrawal from ATMs), because otherwise its just using PIN or biometrics without any kind of second factor auth.
  • _blk 1y ago
    UBS bank mandates their "Secure Access" app as second factor even when logging in from a desktop. They used to allow the smart card reader for existing customers that had it as a work around for a few years but they disabled that. Also many websites are making it remarkably hard to not use the app if they even remotely sense you're not on an actual PC. FB and LinkedIn aren't banks but prime examples.
    • _blk 1y ago
      Oh, and of course the stock app will refuse to run on rooted (or sometimes even just not widely used) phones.
    • marssaxman 1y ago
      Good reason to stop using that bank. I like my credit union.
• ttoinou 1y ago
  Banking might be the wrong example to choose from here since we discovered with cryptos how to handle money without governments
• Bender 1y ago
  I hope all the things you mention never become mandatory some day because I currently use my phone for voice and text only. Sooner than later I plan to get rid of my phone all together. I'm gonna surprise the phone company and get a land line. That means any online service that uses SMS/text to verify me will fail.
  • hypercube33 1y ago
    If you're being serious, you're in for a rude awakening. POTS lines are dead and being replaced with VOIP and VoIP to pots modems on the premise. lots of cities have already started to grub the copper out and replaced it a long time ago with fiber.
    • userbinator 1y ago
      Changing the implementation but not the interface is exactly the point. It doesn't matter how it's delivered; it's just a phone line for voice calls.
    • Bender 1y ago
      I get what you are saying but POTS in my location is still copper. I know because I dug it up when putting in a cattle guard. I will have to splice it back together and run it somewhere other than under my driveway which I had paved. 811 marked it as disco/not-in-use. The telco accidentally leaked their plans to run fiber everywhere so I might wait for them to do that. If it ends up being VoIP then maybe I would still have SMS capability for poor mans 2FA? Maybe the competition will drive the cost of my existing fiber down. To userbinator's point the end result will be no more options to install applications. It would just be a phone. I would be back to good old fashioned NSA voice monitoring.
• linguae 1y ago
  This was a problem during the early 2000s when Windows and Internet Explorer were utterly dominant. Some banks, government services, and other essential websites used ActiveX controls, preventing access by non-Windows users. I remember during my senior year of high school being unable to fill out a college financial aid application circa late 2004 or early 2005 on my PC running FreeBSD and Firefox; I needed to use Windows and Internet Explorer. I remember the stagnation of Internet Explorer combined with increased awareness of security exploits in Windows and Internet Explorer led to the rise of Mozilla Firefox and (to a lesser extent) increased marketshare for the Mac. This, combined with the arrival of smartphones around 2007, put pressure on organizations to make their Web sites accessible to a wider range of browsers instead of just IE. Perhaps if we had a critical mass of people using phones with FOSS software, this would be enough for banks and other organizations to consider people who don’t use Apple/Google products. The challenge, though, is getting that critical mass. Firefox benefitted from Microsoft’s fumbles in the 2000s. It’s going to be hard for a FOSS project to compete head-on against Apple and Google.
• kovac 1y ago
  I think this is the right place to start. A free OS will empower developers to implement technical workarounds that could trick these apps into working there. If the OS is tightly controlled, we have no recourse. Even in the worst case scenario, we could use a cheap big-tech-approved phone for these applications (a glorified digital token) and use the free phone for everything else. When there's enough adoption and trust in the new phone, non-technical avenues are available to influence these organizations to accept the alternative.
  • hnuser123456 1y ago
    And I feel like it undermines any effort to make free, featureful applications if the hardware itself can't be trusted.
    • HexDecOctBin 1y ago
      Trusted to do what? Work against user's interests? Prevent user from even expressing their interests?
    • munchlax 1y ago
      You can trust hardware and software that's easy to inspect. If you can't be sure what's going on and unable to inspect or debug the hardware and software, how can you trust it's doing what you want? Proprietary hardware and software is already known to work against the interests of the user. Not knowing exactly what's going on is being taken advantage of at large scale. Let's put it this way: if you can choose between making your own lasagna with a good recipe vs ready-made microwave lasagna. What would you choose? How about your suit? And would you trust an open known to work well pacemaker vs the latest Motorola or Samsung pacemaker? Would you rather verify the device independently or pay up for an SLA?
      • Arainach 1y ago
        No software is "easy to inspect". Only a tiny fraction of users will ever even try. When things are inspected and problems are found, you need a way to revoke the malicious bits. You'll never notify everyone, which is one of the roles app stores play. You trust hardware and software by establishing boundaries. We figured this out long ago with the kernel mode/user mode privilege check and other things. You want apps to be heavily locked down/sandboxed, and you want the OS to enforce it, but every time you do you go up against the principles of open source absolutists like the FSF. "What do you mean my app can't dig into the storage layer and read the raw image files? So what if apps could use that to leak user location data, I need that ability so I can tell if it's a picture of a bird" For sensitive information - such as financial transactions - the rewards for bad actors are simply too high to trust any device which has been rooted. The banks - who are generally on the hook if something goes wrong, or at least have to pay a lot of lawyers to get off the hook - are not interested in moral arguments, they want a risk-reduced environment or no app for you - as is their right.
• ipaddr 1y ago
  Get a big tech second phone. Cheapest available. Just perform the needed tasks and use your Libre phone for everything else. Does anyone remember having a copy of internet explorer that the bank required (or chrome these days) but using firefox for everything else? Apply that concept to a phone.
  • jeena 1y ago
    But then I would need to constantly charge two phones and keep two phones in my pocket all the time because I never know when I would need to do those things on the go.
    • longitudinal93 1y ago
      I recently added a second phone for secure comms (Graphene). The biggest hassle turned out to be moving data between them. For that I settled on running my own Matrix server.
    • DirkH 1y ago
      You check your banking apps multiple times each day with the frequency and unpredictability expected from messaging apps? If not that frequently or unpredictably then you could just plan to use your laptop for banking some time during the day.
      • jlokier 1y ago
        > You check your banking apps multiple times each day with the frequency and unpredictability expected from messaging apps? I almost do, yes. Life's complicated, I use several bank and credit card services a day. I'm not at home at suitable times for my banking needs. And payments for purchases sometimes require confirmation in real time via phone app. > If not that frequently or unpredictably then you could just plan to use your laptop for banking some time during the day. I used to do that years ago back when it was an option.. But these days, 3 banks I use (two for business) require using their mobile app to authenticate login on a laptop browser. There's no other option. One of the card apps I have to use often won't even run when Android developer mode is enabled, which is quite annoying.
• deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
• 0xbadcafebee 1y ago
  Well you're partially right. After all, the "big tech approved phone OS" is actually Linux, so just having a free OS isn't enough to prevent it from being co-opted and turned into a locked-down platform. But the partially wrong part is, we can make our own platform. PCs let you install and run any software you want, because it's an open platform. If we make an open platform smartphone that can compete on features with the closed behemoths, and that then becomes popular enough, then banks may offer apps on that. But this is tricky too. Linux already has issues getting official support from corporations. We'd need our open platform to be compatible with the closed ones, so that it's easy for banks to run their apps on our open platform. There are already ways around this, like virtual machines to run Android, or other methods. But the closed behemoths may try and end-run around this, like DRM. So we'll still need to advocate for our rights and compatibility.
  • 1718627440 1y ago
    > so just having a free OS isn't enough to prevent it They have a free kernel not a free OS. Them not having a free OS is precisely what is the issue here.
• thuruv 1y ago
  seconding this. more compatible with day-to-day life/apps means more adoption which I believe is a snowball effect.,
• phs318u 1y ago
  I agree that FSF and similar groups should be focusing efforts on influencing government policy at least as much as on software. The problem is that in practice, you’ll get a bunch of people who are erstwhile free software supporters, shouting back that the FSF should “stay n their lane” and stay out of politics (missing the point that in life, everything is politics).
• mekoka 1y ago
  If the government needs me to get a side phone for ID, I'll cross that bridge. For everyday use, I'm fine with having a "rogue" phone as my primary.
  • jay_kyburz 1y ago
    The next step will be for them to prevent you connecting to the cellular network.
    • longitudinal93 1y ago
      Just tether through your shit phone
• userbinator 1y ago
  Indeed, binary blobs are not much of a problem; it's anti-user "security" that has to be attacked. Otherwise we'll end up with user-hostile systems that we can see the source code of but can't modify, in contrast to systems that we can't see the source code of but can modify. The Windows modding scene of the late 90s/early 2000s is a good example of the latter (and I've joked that every power user was a novice reverse-engineer), while Android is turning out to be a good example of the former. Stallman had a good idea for free (as in freedom) software, but then "missed the forest for the trees" by focusing on the source code.
  • DonHopkins 1y ago
    >Stallman had a good idea for free (as in freedom) software, but then "missed the forest for the trees" by focusing on the source code. RMS is afraid of trees! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28419139 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28419139
• smashah 1y ago
  i think the best solution to this would be some sort of docker-project for people to remotely access a device hooked up to a raspberry pi or something at home via adb via https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy https://github.com/Genymobile/scrcpy as "natively" as possible.
  • jlokier 1y ago
    I agree, and I've done similar to this for mobile banking successfully. This is the way :) However, I expect at some point they'll insist on biometric authentication. That'd exclude people who can't use the biometrics. But one bank (Revolut) told me that they're dropping customers who don't have a passport or driving license in the UK, for KYC reasons that they said they were required to follow, despite there being a large number of people without either. So I expect banks to have no problem excluding <x% of people in a discriminatory way, if they can find an excuse, eventually.
• varispeed 1y ago
  Funny that bank software needs approved phone, but runs absolutely fine in the browser. That to me sounds like collusion - something that regulators should look at. There is absolutely no need for banking app to require "legitimate" Android or other operating system.
  • lambertsimnel 1y ago
    Increasingly, browser-based online banking requires authentication with a proprietary smartphone app, where it used to accept other forms of 2FA
    • MrDrMcCoy 1y ago
      As terrible as proprietary app 2fa is, it still beats the tar out of SMS or email 2fa, security-wise. I don't get why my bank, who used to be pretty cutting edge, never implemented TOTP or passkeys...
• hedora 1y ago
  There is one solution to this problem that many people reading this message can contribute to: Make sure your app has a progressive web app version that has feature parity with the store apps. That way, the app will work on phones like the librephone, and, if Apple or Google decide to kick you off the store, you and your users have some recourse. As a bonus, it’s compatible with open source — users can modify the app and install it without jailbreaks, root or (for now) sideloading. React Native supports this (and can mostly be bundled with electron for mac/win/linux support). Are there other stacks people can recommend?
  • scheeseman486 1y ago
    This won't help if Google/Apple/Microsoft roll out integrity checks for browsers, something which they have already suggested they want to do.
    • mikestorrent 1y ago
      It won't just be them. I foresee Cloudflare and other CDNs offering a free checkbox: [] Require age of majority verified user And it will in turn depend on Secure Attestation, Web Credentials, and other recent W3C work to provide proof that you're the registered owner, age of majority and verified by thumbprint or other biometrics, running an unmodified device. Your ID might be escrowed with your OS vendor, email provider, bank, ISP, or even Twitter/X, who knows. Either way, as an end user you'll be mollified that you don't have to provide your ID to the adult site, and the adult site will be happy that they don't have to implement any of this themselves. And, of course, this will mean that an intelligence service could have ironclad proof of exactly what person visits what website, effectively killing a lot of online anonymity.
      • fuzzzerd 1y ago
        That sounds awful.
      • Barbing 1y ago
        You’re probably 100% right and it’s honestly heartbreaking. Time to donate to the EFF and FSF I guess…
• thaumasiotes 1y ago
  > What does it matter if you can run a completely free software stack on your phone, if your bank software (or your required government ID, as is looking depressingly likely) requires you to run a Big Tech approved phone OS? Log in to your bank over the internet, the normal way.
• matheusmoreira 1y ago
  Yeah... Corporations and governments are starting to push remote attestation. There'll be little point to a free computer if it gets us denied service everywhere. At this point we're gonna end up marginalized, like second class citizens of society.
  • jMyles 1y ago
    > There'll be little point to a free computer if it gets us denied service everywhere. At this point we're gonna end up marginalized, like second class citizens of society. Given the apparent trajectory of the corporate/government model of organizing society, it seems like they're going to be the ones that will be second-class citizens.
• nostrademons 1y ago
  You can replace the banking system. Replacing the banking system does nothing if a single tech company can brick the phones of people using the replacement, or block it from launching.
• wafflemaker 1y ago
  Banks and national id apps already work on GrapheneOS. Sometimes you just need to msg devs and ask them to use a different OS attestation method - see link 1. This battle is won already. 1.: https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-guide https://grapheneos.org/articles/attestation-compatibility-gu...
  • twothreeone 1y ago
    Sorry, but no. Device attestation is another mechanism to track and ultimately exercise control over the user. It fundamentally goes against the freedom of choice. You want me to authenticate with multiple factors? Cool.. let me tell you which method I'm already using on all my other accounts and then tell me how to register that with your service. You want to "measure" my device? Okay, I'll take my business elsewhere..
• autoexec 1y ago
  > What does it matter if you can run a completely free software stack on your phone, if your bank software (or your required government ID, as is looking depressingly likely) requires you to run a Big Tech approved phone OS? What does it matter if you can use any OS you want if your phone is filled with SoCs which are bugged and backdoored by the state and/or who knows who else? The reality is that we need both free hardware and free software. I can always tell my bank to fuck off and move my accounts to one that gives me freedom to use the mobile OS of my choosing, and if there isn't a single bank on earth willing to do that I can always simply refuse to use my cell phone for banking. I'd much rather keep the phone I control and trust while limiting myself to only having the options of a desktop PC, a laptop, an ATM, a phone call, a drive thru, and walking into my bank's closest branch when interacting with my bank. Not being able to also stab my finger at a cell phone screen to check my balance isn't really that big of a deal.
  • geokon 1y ago
    Safe hardware is super difficult The only project I know of that really actively addressing the end to end problem is Bunnie Huang's precursor. Work seems to be going on low-key: https://github.com/betrusted-io/xous-core https://github.com/betrusted-io/xous-core
  • bigstrat2003 1y ago
    > What does it matter if you can use any OS you want if your phone is filled with SoCs which are bugged and backdoored by the state and/or who knows who else? Perhaps. But how does this effort from the FSF do anything to solve that? They are (as far as I can tell) producing firmware, not hardware. If the hardware manufacturers are working with the government or whomever to spy on you, they will just not use the FSF firmware in that case.
• mrsssnake 1y ago
  The mere fact such phone exist could be enough argument for pushing back, for ex. hurtful legislations. People tend to see current world as carved in stone, like it is not going to change. It is, still not easy but, much easier to ask government not to mandate Windows/MacOS only program for essential task, because of couple of users of other systems, rather than asking to imagine that in future there might be other systems.
• pessimizer 1y ago
  Why would the FSF be working on a problem that has absolutely no technical element? What exactly do you want them to tell your bank and your government? Why exactly can't you tell your bank and your government that? > that is where I feel they could truly make the biggest difference for freedom for the average user. By doing what exactly? Telling your government to change their ID policies? You seem to be complaining at your health food store about the nutrition of McDonald's food, because most people eat at McDonald's and that's where they would make the most difference.
• jajuuka 1y ago
  Historically we have seen bumps in Linux usage because of cross-platform support. Either officially or unofficially. So I agree that focusing on making that transition more seamless will be of more benefit than telling people they need to use something different or suck it up. There is a reason rooting and making banking and other high security apps functional has been pretty popular.
• martin82 1y ago
  In that case, I will own a surveillance phone JUST for the government ID app, and put that into airplane mode almost all the time, except for the few times per month where I need that shitty app. The rest of the time, I will use a free phone. All the apps that I will not be able to use any more? Doesn't matter. I am now old and grumpy enough to realise that phones are utterly evil and actually useless. Give me a camera, Google Maps (or better a non-Google alternative), Signal and a browser, and I don't need anything else.