The challenge isn't buying it, the challenge is being able to do phone things with it.
Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone. Most things will work but it takes one critical service that doesn't have a viable workaround, and you're forced to buy (and possibly carry) a "mainstream" phone just for that.
Banking, government, authentication, postal service and public transit apps are just some of the common categories that will, in the end, force you to use one of those systems, unless governments mandate viable alternatives. The QR-code based recaptcha that's being introduced will be another brick in the wall.
As an individual, it feels like my options are to either submit or try to live a hermit's life, bringing endless suffering and exclusion to myself.
> Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone.
Fight this, fight it hard. It is not acceptable to have to pay a monthly fee to a giant corporation to participate in unrelated things.
I do have a cell phone (grudgingly) but I go way out of my way to never use it. I tell every business I only have a landline phone (which I do have). I will not use anything that supposedly requires a phone, give me an alternative or you're not getting my business.
While I don't have the full ethical commitment of RMS, I can be very obstinate and will push this hard.
This is the way! I do not have a smartphone. I print maps, use email, print boarding cards, do my banking and shopping with a web browser, pay with cash or a debit card.
I think people have been brain washed to believe they can no longer live life without being enslaved by a surveillance device.
Lost? Ask for directions. Need a map? Go to a hotel or a tourist center, or print one in advance.
The thing is, most people do want to have a smartphone. Either because living without requires an amount of effort they are not interested in or because they actually like using a smartphone for certain things. Personally, I like having the web and maps accessible from the palm of my hand everywhere I go.
So, the solution is not to suggest that people should not use a smartphone. That ship has sailed. I agree that it should still be possible to do things without for people that do not want to use one. But you are not going to convince more than a small percentage of the population to abandon smartphones.
Instead we should focus on making alternative smartphone ecosystems (AOSP can be a starting point) and getting technology that is used to shut out competition (e.g. Google Play Strong Integrity) banned.
Yeah, this whole discussion thread is essentially irrelevant to the underlying topic because of exactly what you said.
It’s just the typical HN humble brag thread about being present and owning no technology.
Awesome that these folks don’t own a phone and give their landline to businesses. I love that for them.
But I like my smartphone, GPS directions, digital wallets, streaming music, etc. I just don’t want it to be controlled by two companies. I want there to be a healthy market of multiple options including open source alternatives.
This for me has been achieved on my desktop and laptop but not yet on my smartphone.
Walking into a hotel lobby to get a map printed seems like a much greater surveillance risk than looking up directions on my phone. The cameras, the printer, the hotel staff, the other hotel guests; they’re all third party to your private information. Is that really any better than Apple or Google telemetry?
Sorry Pale but I doubt you are either James Bond or Edward Snowden. Chill out. I once visit Japan, and you get papers with full of information and maps where stuff line out the direction for you ALL the time... You see there are alternatives and in this special use case you even gain privacy by blending in with all the other crowd.
When you go on holiday, do you have to find an Internet café to print off your boarding pass for the flight home? Or do you select destinations covered by airlines that allow you to get a boarding pass more than 48 hours in advance?
They said they don't use a phone. You can do online check-in on any device with a browser. I'm sure you can point to a single airline that only offers it through a native mobile app but that'd be an extreme exception.
> Internet café to print off your boarding pass for the flight home?
You can print the boarding pass at the airline kiosk at the airport, at least in any US airport I've been to. I always do this.
As noted in a peer post I try very hard to do everything without a phone. I do have a phone but don't want to depend on it.
Boarding passes in particular seem very unreliable on a phone. I always have the paper boarding pass printed at the airport but for curiosity I check the phone app boarding pass. More than 50% of the time the phone app boarding pass hangs from bad connectivity while standing at the gate and I can't retrieve it. Fortunately I always have the printed boarding pass so that always works. Paper does not rely on internet connectivity so it will always be infinitely more reliable.
Pardon me but you could have in many cases have cached the data.
I honor your strong commitment. I most often use digital because "it's easier" for them. But not for me. Sometimes I make fun and use printouts of their digital system just for the lulz.
But back to cached data. Most often the mobil application catches data upfront and still be valid later even offline. Just as a reminder. Peace.
Which airline requires you to print your own boarding pass and won't let you on the plane without a phone? Now I haven't flown in years but last time I did, the normal procedure was to show up at the airport either with your printed ticket or just your reference code and ID, and either use a kiosk or talk to a person to get your boarding pass, and also to check in your bags.
Ryanair don’t charge you 55 euros, at least not from what I’m reading [1]. It’s completely free, at the airport, provided you’ve checked in already, which from my experience can be done up to 24 hours prior to your flight. Plenty of time to use a hotel computer, someone else’s device or find an internet cafe if you aren’t completely disorganised.
I’m not sure about Wizz Air, I’ve never flown with them and their website isn’t quite as clear as Ryanairs.
Because these two examples are tiny in comparison with the decrease in surveillance you will get, and the example you set for your fellow men, and just spreading the norm in society that ubiquitous surveillance is wrong and that we can live ethical lives without being slaves and chained to the government and corporations.
Undoubtedly having a phone would increase convenience in my life. I’d also have to go to work more to pay for it which would seriously inconvenience my snowboarding time.
I’d also spend more of my life staring at a small device instead of talking to people or just enjoying the trees, mountains and rivers.
Here in France, my bank won't let me 2FA into my account (i have to physically go to the bank every single time i need something), and i can't get car ownership papers for a car i legally bought from the registered owner 2 years ago due to the administration closing down 100% of their offices in favor of online forms (tried the online forms many times, as well as registered letter to the headquarters).
This anecdata probably says more about french techno-fascism and politics of destroying public services than about how phones have somehow become mandatory because of society evolving in general. I'm still very happy not to have a phone.
Or pay for parking in many european cities. So I guess you are not forced into a hermit life as long as... you are already happy with your hermit life.
I live in a small town. There is no uber or Lyft, or QR code parking. I ride my bike a lot. Snowboard nearly everyday in the winter and there is cell service in the mountains.
I lived in mega cities for 10 years, I’ll never do it again.
Call in hermit life if you want, I call it the simple life where enjoyment and happiness are the priority
US cities as well, now that you mention it. Open lots often require scanning a QR code to pay. They watch cameras and tow your car very quickly if you don't.
Maybe the reason this guy gets away with not having a smartphone is that his friends use their smartphones for him whenever things like this pop up?
It's mind blowing that we've allowed the development of a de-factor personal ID device absolutely controlled by an oligopoly of two private corporations.
Do people realize that this means either of these companies, since they can remotely turn off your account or device, can deplatform you from society including from many government services?
It's an astounding amount of power we have simply ceded to these two companies.
I know you are not going to like it, but it started when they took our guns. Now they took our jobs. Next is unified minimal global personal tax (seems to be decided at 30%). On unrealised capital gains. And phones? That's a smoke screen for you to look other way. (And to watch you all the time too)
> It's an astounding amount of power we have simply ceded to these two companies.
We didn't do it, our representatives did it for us, mostly unaware of what they were doing and still without a clue about what to do with whatever they've created. No they can't, and they won't, academia BS isn't helping anyone either.
> Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone.
Is it the phone or just the mobile operating system? I do most of my phone stuff on a tablet that I keep at home - where it's safer. I am currently using an Android phone (without an account) for GPS, phone calls (contacts), internet, games, email (alternatives to google), etc...
But for those critical and sensitive apps (banking, etc)... I consider those to be too dangerous to be walking around with.
So any phone will serve (I can wait to get home to check email for example).
That doesn't solve for services that by definition need to be accessed on the go, e.g. public transit, parcel pickup, luggage lockers, rental bikes, restaurant menus, paying for parking, etc. (some of these may not mandate phones in your area yet or may allow mobile web alternatives, these are just examples where I've seen strong pushes towards apps or at leas in many places).
This is the way. Don't go, or if you don't know, ask for a menu, if that does not exist, ask for a phone from the staff. Have used all of these methods with excellent results. The restaurants wants to sell, they will find you a menu or a phone.
On the occasions where I've been to a restaurant that tries to pull off the QR nonsense, I just ask for a menu, I tell them I don't have a phone.
I've yet to see one where they can't find me an actual menu. If it ever happens, I'll walk out and be very annoyingly loud at letting them know why they lost my business.
Pushing for your rights isn't always pleasant, but it's important.
I hate when people respond like this, I recently did three months with a dumb phone to attempt to get away from iOS/Android in a major US city and it was impossible. All of the things that made it impossible used to be possible without a smart phone, but they aren’t anymore and they’re not magically back when you try and navigate life without one.
Things like paid surface parking lots. Used to you could pay at a machine or a lot attendant, well there aren’t attendants anymore and few people use the machines so there isn’t enough incentive to fix them when they’re vandalized.
Some restaurants have printed backup menus but some straight up don’t. Printing menus costs money, why spend it if they don’t have to?
Digital signage that tells you how far away transit is, whether there are currently adjusted times, etc. is a lower priority now that everyone has maps in their pocket that track the transit in real time.
Showing up to a concert early to convince the ticket window to give you a physical ticket for a digital only event, and then they want email proof or to visibly see an app on the smartphone that is glitching is ridiculous.
The list of tiny cuts goes on and on. All of them worked without smartphones but the incentives flipped and now you can’t escape and you don’t realize the backups are gone until you try it for a while. It sucks.
We'd need regulation for that. Either a mandate that the digital option is optional, and services must have an alternative means, or a mandate that any app based service also has an equally viable mobile web option, making the app optional.
Tbh I see no reason why all of that couldn't just be a website instead of a native app. Menus should just be a website, transit should still be offering physical metro cards, the lockers & bikes could just as easily be a website.
Folks on HN won't like this ida but quite frankly I'd go a step further and have a mandate that services like these must offer an API for the public to use in order to bring their own app/solution. It'd be nice to not be limited to exclusively first party options. How ridiculous is it that there are so many different pay for parking apps, when if all of them just offered an API I could roll my one all in one parking web app, etc.
I'd even pay a subscription, like many of these services offer already, for API access instead.
I refuse to believe that's true. That they were denying Dorothy (92) from going through customs because she couldn't use an app. That's an extraordinary claim.
If they weren't denying Dorothy, that means you did not need an app.
From what I'm reading, non-users weren't and couldn't have actually been denied entry. It wouldn't have held up in court either. They could be made to quarantine.
No, but you will likely be inconvenienced to a similar level as losing your house keys, and lose access to important services. You won't immediately die, because most people can survive for quite some time on nothing but questionable river water and a piece of cardboard under a bridge, but there is a difference between survival and existing in society.
You can exist, but life will be as inconvenient as it was in the 1990s (though importantly, it didn't seem inconvenient at the time, it was just the way things were).
That's not true, because in the 1990s there was no presumption that everyone has a major-vendor smartphone. Now, the ways to do things without a smartphone are often disappearing, so things are more inconvenient. For example, ticket machines and printed schedules for public transit are going away in many places.
I don't have any usable public transit where I live but the place where I'm familiar with it is Chicago and all the train stations have ticket machines. Bus stops no, but you can pay on the bus with a payment card, transit card, or an app. Cash fares are no longer accepted for some time.
I miss the old tokens they used to use. So simple, anonymous, easy to share with traveling companions, though could be annoying when you ran out.
I disagree. You cannot even book appointments in a lot of banks today, a thing you could do in the 90s. Like that, a lot of services are unavailable without a smartphone and its non-smartphone equivalent is not available anymore.
1. I don't know any bank that does, but in any case voting with your wallet is always an option.
2., 3., 4. Voting with your wallet once again.
5. That would be illegal in many jurisdictions, some countries even have a centralized systems for doctors to upload documentation (that you access using your ID as an authentication token).
6., 7. Unless the employer provides said smartphone, that would be illegal to require in most countries.
8. Vote with your wallet, also all such airlines can print a boarding pass for free if you do the checkin on the website.
Half of the voting with your wallet are blind to the fact that you can't vote anything else.
My village has one football team, not N. There's one burger place, not two.
For the rest, appealing to legality is pointless, I ain't bringing my family doctor to a tribunal over this, this is real life and me being petty for not wanting to use a phone. Being right years from now is beyond pointless.
epolanski@ is, unfortunately, right. You may try to "walk away" if you are not interested in the end result. If the fact of walking away for you is more important / feels better than actually doing what you came for. (And don't get me started on how girls look at you when you start fishing for petty change in your pockets - that seriously limits your dating pool LOL)
As someone with a long term partner who shares my use of cash, at least for some things, you don’t want to date people who look down on you for your choice of payment. Red flag. Waste of time.
Have some self respect. Don’t date people who aren’t mostly aligned with your values.
I know this was a joke, but if you’re having trouble meeting someone who shares your values, maybe try looking in different places than you would expect (they don’t have to share your interests, that’s less important than you would think as long as you can bend to each other) or reevaluating what you think your “type” is. Many people chase a certain type of person, and only after they end up with someone totally different do they realize that their attraction to that type was some kind of pathology, perhaps replaying trauma from childhood.
I recently skipped a concert at the YouTube theater in LA because my phone is too old for Ticketmaster or Hollywood Park apps. Even though you can go and buy a ticket at the box office they have to send you the ticket to the app. No option to print it or any non-app way.
"You can check in on the Ryanair.com website or on the mobile App"
"If you checked in but cannot present your boarding pass on the app when you arrive at the airport, you will receive a free of charge boarding pass."
(This it is more difficult as their appears to be even fewer staff around than before)
Also:
"You can check in for your flight at the airport, but you will have to pay an airport check-in fee per passenger to cover the extra cost of the airport check-in service. Please see our Table of Fees."
I flew with RyanAir several times after they introduced a "mandatory" app boarding pass, never had problems with check-in agents just printing the boarding pass for free (after doing the web check-in). Had to pretend my phone died once, in all other cases they just printed the pass no questions asked.
(Depending on whether you mean "can't exist without a phone" or "can't exist without an Apple/Google monopoly ecosystem")
3. you don't need an Apple or Google account to scan a QR code and open a web page.
4. Why is it "scam" pricing? You're getting a discount from giving them your information with an app. Like Kindle charging more to remove adverts. Dislikable, scummy not scammy. (i.e. they aren't taking your money and providing nothing and then disappearing).
6. I think in the UK / Europe the employer would have to provide your fiancee with a company phone so she could access her workplace, and could not legally require her to have a personal phone with an employer managed/controlled app on it.
7. Does Google/Apple authentication require a Google/Apple app? I see "sign in with Google" on web pages on my Windows desktop. Google Authenticator app is a fairly standard OTP passcode app which can be done in many other programs, password vaults and browser plugins.
Last year I could check in on their website, but needed the app for the boarding card. They might have changed that, but that article doesn't make it clear.
First and foremost: I'm sorry for you. Living in a participation-dictated-by-app hellscape sucks. But most people only realize this when the magical one or two steps happen that force them to "touch grass".
With regards to specific points that match with my reality:
> "My fiance's office badges are smartphone-based. You cannot enter otherwise."
I worked for a company where that was a thing. Easy fix: They issued me (and others) a smartphone for that. And that slab never left the workplace either; I fetched/returned it before/after my day by notifying the security desk.
Everything else on your list is either irrelevant or unnacceptable to me, or simply illegal where I live.
You would be PIP'd next week today. Nobody is dealing with that anymore. Is it suppressing our rights? Yes. Absolutely. And it will get worse. And no, people will not revolt. And you will be left behind, on the other side of the gates, after all your team has gone through. Happy to do it? Rich enough to do it? I'm not ...
> 3. Half of restaurants in my area do not have non-QR code menus, they just don't.
Not knocking this list, the shit is real. But I just had a lovely imaginary conversation with a server asking them what they would recommend and then trying something brand new.
When I go to a restaurant that has QR-only menus, I won't make a scene about it, but it lowers the mental rating I give the place and I'm less likely to return.
Joke's on the server. The robot that will replace their job soon will be more than happy to regale you with any hallucinated information you would like about the subtleties of the menu.
This might be country specific? Specifically dependent on laws in the fields of consumer-protection and keeping things universally accessible.
I don't own a smartphone. I have never owned a smartphone. There are inconveniences, and big organizations definitely try to push you toward the way of doing things which has the lowest costs for them - but there are no actual blockers. There is always a path involving actual humans, and regular phone calls (or emails or paper forms).
Reactions tend to be wistful variations of "I wish I could" or "but how do you?" - and it's really always about the most trivial inconveniences.
To be honest, I never tried, but I see for example the removal of more and more procedures in person. In Spain where I'm from or Switzerland where I live it can be still manageable, but in the Nordic countries for example everything is digital and even cash is barely existent. A lot of payments are made by phone apps only.
I am from Nordic country. I did not use any cash, had no wallet for several years. It's not needed. After the US government acting like it does I mostly stopped using cards. Like with phone OSes a US-controlled duopoly.
Cash does not to need to be used anywere, but cards can be avoided for weeks until I need to use it again. Most can be handled by cash or bank transfer without problems.
For phones I have not any Google Android or iOS until a year ago. Nowdays I have a Google work phone, but it's always in flight mode except when a pay my lunch subsidized by employer. I type this comment on my Sailfish device and I use a degoogled Android. Can cause minor inconvenienance occasionally, but rarely enough to turn on my work phone.
Sorry, I should proof-read my comments... Can't edit it anymore
It is not necessary to use cash anywhere because cards can be used really everywhere.
But if you don't want to use cards, it's still possible to avoid it for weeks in row. You can pay cash at most brick and mortar places and by bank transfer at most online sites.
Not my experience. I'm in the USA, and there are still bank branches everywhere, I'd say as many as ever and new ones are being built. In fact within a mile of my house the finishing touches on the latest new one (full remodel of a former restaurant building) are just about done.
> I'd say as many as ever and new ones are being built.
That's an amazing difference compared to the UK. My local town had 5 bank branches ten years ago, now there are none. Until 2 weeks ago we didn't even have a cash machine; fortunately there is one now. It is something that has rapidly changed in the last 15 years.
You should be able to do all that from a computer at home right?
The times I needed to do serious banking on the go are limited. Yes convenient, but replaceable with a 10 minute session at home using my Firefox or similar on Linux.
Why does this permeate the HN all
the time. You can 100% function without a fucking smartphone. My Dad doesn’t have one, he has zero-to-no trouble going to the bank and paying his bills and just about every other imaginable thing. If there was something he could not do and there were repercussions for it he’d be calling an attorney to rectify the situation. It is crazy to keep reading this over and over on HN, so weird
It's a bias, an in-bubble illiteracy effect, concerning the perception and analysis of realities (e. g. experiences) outside that bubble, mirroring an in-group's projections about an out-group. It is, in my decades of experience, a very common phenomenon in the IT sector.
> "My Dad doesn’t have one, he has zero-to-no trouble going to the bank and paying his bills and just about every other imaginable thing."
So far, that holds true for me as well (Germany).
> "If there was something he could not do and there were repercussions for it he’d be calling an attorney to rectify the situation."
The crux: the increasing friction brought on by rising technological entry barriers. In Germany you have at least the non-exclusion principle of Teilhabe (lit.: participation) which gives certain guarantees. But such achievements of democracy are continually under fire.
> It's a bias, an in-bubble illiteracy effect, concerning the perception and analysis of realities (e. g. experiences) outside that bubble, mirroring an in-group's projections about an out-group. It is, in my decades of experience, a very common phenomenon in the IT sector.
I (also German) have the impression that people who work in the IT sector are often much more critical of surveillance methods (including smartphones) than the average citizen.
And hopefully it stays that way in Germany. A state and its essential-to-life institutions and businesses (which includes cultural participation) need to be accessible to everyone. That includes people who don't own a smartphone, for whatever reason.
Nordic, works just fine, i only have an HMD 'Nokia' non-smartphone (i detest capacitive touchscreens, and my previous ungoogled qwerty android phone broke,
waiting for my next one to arrive in 2026-12 or thereabouts).
No QR-code-only restaurants that i have seen, and i would walk out without a word if that happened (even if i had a device that can do that). Bank does 2FAs second part with an SMS, first part is username, password and an otp code from a paper. Bank login is also a very common way of logging into governmental systems, but those only use the username, password and otp code, skipping the SMS, alternatively i could use an id card with a reader, state provides even Linux software for that.
The housing companys winter car engine heating sockets operate with an app, or alternatively just opening the lid and setting the timer yourself.
Additional data point: my dad, when he was still alive (-2025), had a smartphone but wouldn't use apps beyond facebook, did his banking by mailing in signed bills or at the bank in person, without an appointment.
Technically, sure you probably can spend a large amount of time, energy, and money to find alternative non-smartphone ways of navigating through modern life.
Practically, you need a smartphone.
Engaging an attorney != practical
That's the thing. The larger amount of time, energy, and money we spent on doing banking in the 1990s was real. The web, and then mobile apps, made a lot of that more convenient. But it's not impossible to live the old way. You can still write paper checks, go to the bank to make a deposit and get cash, etc. It used to be normal, everyone did it, now it seems extremely inconvenient for most people.
"You can still write paper checks" – greetings to our US brethren! :-) In EU you will meet a girl at the counter who can operate only bank "tap on" terminal and have no idea how to print anything or where the website is. Why? She doesn't care. She is paid same money if she does or doesn't. Wnant to complain? Here is the feedback form (QR code) ... Manager? She is ...
Both because a dwindling minority of people do old things the old way; and because new things (eg Netflix and Uber) are designed for the new way, even if they don't absolutely require it.
> The larger amount of time, energy, and money we spent on doing banking in the 1990s was real. The web, and then mobile apps, made a lot of that more convenient.
I wouldn't say so: when I go to the bank, I often combine it with grocery shopping, which I have to do anyway. So doing banking the old way is hardly an inconvenience.
In Portugal you have to do that at the bank terminals, otherwise going to the counter implies paying a services tax, depending on the kind of customer one happens to be.
Yeah, and lot of people assume that something doesn't exist because they aren't personally aware of it. Quite often there are people who are willing to serve those who don't make mainstream choices. Other times, it means that you simply have a different lifestyle from the mainstream. There's nothing wrong with that.
It's crazy that you're so insulated inside your own bubble and close-minded not to realize that the degree to which smartphones are required in daily life differ massively across countries, and HN is a global place. The places where your dad would have trouble going to the bank and doing "every other imaginable thing" are real and exist. You're just not in one.
> the degree to which smartphones are required in daily life differ massively across countries, and HN is a global place.
In some countries people are willing to fight much harder against being coerced to have to use a smartphone. The message should thus rather be: follow their example.
Yep, many older people right now don’t have a smart phone and never will.
As long as some younger people stay that course we should be fine. Hopefully we’ll see an increase of dumb phone adoption in a growing cohort younger adults. But the FUD spread in threads like this actually spreads misinformation and makes that less likely to happen
And those older people frequently have to ask someone in their life who has a smartphone to assist them. They still need a smartphone to manage modern life they just don’t happen to own the phone they need.
Because the real complaint isn’t “it's impossible to live without a smartphone”, it is “I want all of the conveniences of a smartphone without having one, and I want every business to cater to the small minority who don’t want to use a smartphone”.
It’s like complaining that it’s difficult to travel to another continent if you don’t want to fly. I want to go from LA to Paris in 12 hours without getting on a plane!
I dont have a personal smartphone (I do have a pile of them in my office for testing software I make) but I dont use one myself. Its fine, I can do my banking and whatever. I live in Ireland.
Inconvenient? My life is super convenient. No stress, deep thinking and deep work, super focus and concentration.
What I would find inconvenient is to be like the smartphone zombies around me, adicted to their phones, restlessly doomscrolling with dead eyes, feeling empty inside.
Print some stuff from time to time or arguing my way through tickets offices is a small price to pay for not being enslaved to the IT-machine.
>you can no longer exist in society without a phone.
I do just fine without.
But certainly there are additional challenges. In my city, for example, there has been a massive shift towards phone-pay parking... which excludes my paying for it — still waiting for my citation (to challenge in court).
Carrying my pager with me is the only reason people will pretend-believe I'm actually phoneless. Many have never seen beeper technology, its one-way advancedness.
> Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone.
millions of people would like a word…
> Most things will work but it takes one critical service that doesn't have a viable workaround, and you're forced to buy (and possibly carry) a "mainstream" phone just for that.
Absolutely not, if there is “critical service” that requires an iPhone or Android you call an attorney.
> Banking, government, authentication, postal service and public transit apps are just some of the common categories that will, in the end, force you to use one of those systems, unless governments mandate viable alternatives.
There are now and there always will be alternatives
> As an individual, it feels like my options are to either submit or try to live a hermit's life, bringing endless suffering and exclusion to myself.
As an individual you can and should fight any system that forces you into buying a smartphone. Alternatives must exist even if they might be “incovenient” (e.g. have to do it browser vs. via some “App”)
I disagree, because the impact on my quality of life from fighting the fight is just not a level of sacrifice that is sensible.
> There are now and there always will be alternatives
The problem is that those "alternatives" often come with serious downsides, from higher cost, to massive inconvenience, to having to work around simply not having a service. And while most of the time it's possible to work around it, most people quickly hit the limit where the cost isn't bearable.
> I disagree, because the impact on my quality of life from fighting the fight is just not a level of sacrifice that is sensible
Interesting. I feel then that if this is the case we cannot complain then, no? If the fight is not worth fighting (I think that it is) than complaints about it are pointless (for the lack of a softer word…)
you have an example where you are forced to use a mobile device? genuinely interested cause while I have a smartphone I don’t have hardly any “apps” on it (on my iphone all the “apps” are on the first “page” (without grouping). I do not like the idea of losing a phone and potentially someone getting access to my entire digital life (my phone password is 6 zeros) and I genuinely do not use phone for anything important
HMRC in the UK / multiple Government Portals. Have you been to India (Air tickets)? Or China (Wechat/Alipay QR codes or you go hungry)? And see my example above regarding US woman at Hilton in Rome.
I would immediately change my mobile service provider, this is an easy one and choices are plenty. financially as well, you can save yourself a lot of money if you have a cadence for switching providers
It’s always been the case. In previous eras people were “forced” to use mastercard / visa, Windows, AT&T, Western Union, East India Company, Templar bnking, etc.
I am not remotely defending the situation, past or present, just saying it’s a recurring theme.
> Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone
Hyperbole much.
I’m a 44 year old software engin, I don’t have a phone. Have never had a smart phone, haven’t had a dumb phone since 2015.
Some things are annoying, for example, I have to keep pushing my bank to let me use email not SMS. Going somewhere new I’ll look online on my laptop and jot down a few directions on paper.
That’s about it.
I snowboard and hike and hunt and camp and fish, no coverage doing all those anyway, so much of my life when not in a house with a laptop I simply don’t need or want one.
I'd wager the majority of people on this site could afford $100-$200 for a separate phone that's solely used for apps that mandate Google/Apple services. As a bonus, using the "mainstream" phone with only those apps increases security, compared to having your banking apps on the same phone as other random apps.
"As an individual, it feels like my options are to either submit or try to live a hermit's life, bringing endless suffering and exclusion to myself."
Classic "all-or-nothing", "black and white" HN comment
No middle ground. Two extremes and nothing in between
In the real world, few people think this way
Not only that, but it's common today to have more than one computer
There is no shortage of HN comments that keep claiming "banking apps" as an argument against any alternatives to using a single phone running a corporate mobile OS _for everything they do with a computer_, not just banking. Feels like a meme
These people must do a lot of banking on the go in places where laptops, for instance, cannot travel. If so, one wonders why not just have a phone dedicated to mobile banking
This probably depends on location, but generally, you cannot log in to your bank account on your laptop/computer without using your phone's banking app for 2FA. That's the status quo among banks.
Whether it may be possible to convince a bank to give you a hardware token instead if they even still make them is not an assured thing.
> you cannot log in to your bank account on your laptop/computer without using your phone's banking app
Where is this?
I have lots of bank accounts, probably more than most people. Three local credit unions, Fidelity, Schwab, Chase, BofA, Citibank, Barclays, two local area banks, and two international banks. Plus a few lesser known ones for 401k/IRA accounts.
I have never installed any bank phone app. I do all my bank interactions from my desktop via Firefox.
MFA is a requirement of the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in the EU and many banks use their apps for authorising online card payments. Its also common to use apps as 2FA for logging in to online banking or making bank transfers.
There can be alternatives in some cases (some banks offer code generating card readers, for example) but for personal accounts in particular, it would probably be difficult to operate without banking apps.
In Singapore, the largest local bank, and three large overseas banks (Citibank, HSBC and Standard Chartered) all require my to be near my phone to login. However, I haven't tried just saying I don't have a phone from the beginning. I know they used to have physical security tokens, perhaps they still would have provided one if I had insisted.
In New Zealand, I've only come across one bank that requires you to provide authentication from your phone (Rabobank), and in Australia I have less experience, but it's not universal either.
galvin@ is right. I +1'd that.
Regarding banks ... try HSBC. (I know, "I can always use another bank". Thanks. I happen to be Premier only at HSBC ...)
I have several accounts in different banks (across two different countries) and never had problems with using SMS as a second factor for internet banking. Definitely not status quo, at least in Europe.
I'm in Europe and my bank (and most other banks in the country) only still allow existing TAN authenticators until they break or run out of battery, but only support 2FA with their app going forward.
Interesting that you mention Europe, because if I remember correctly, at least in Germany, all banks that I'm aware of dropped SMS support when PSD2 was introduced.
The are people who dislike using Apple and Google smartphones
HN replies often try to reframe this problem from
(a) "How do I avoid using an Apple or Google smartphone" for whatever reason^[FN1]
to
(b) "Banking apps do not work on non-Apple, non-Google" smartphones
or
(c) Apple and Google smartphones need to become likeable, e.g., by pleading with the companies, petitioning the government for regulation, etc.
FN1. I have not seen any HN comments that suggest anyone is concerned about _using a banking app_ on an Apple or Google smartphone. What I have seen are comments that suggest Apple and Google smartphones are unsatisfactory for _other reasons_, such as being "locked down", "not an open platform", "privacy" risks, "security" flaws, etc. The non-banking uses of these smartphones are what cause concern
The problem (a) can be solved by choosing a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone, `i.e., a smartphone running a non-Apple, non-Google OS, or, better yet, by choosing a different form factor running a non-Apple, non-Google OS, _for non-banking uses_
There are some commenters who obviously have no intention of avoiding Apple and Google smarthones _where possible_. They will keep using these smartphones for _everything_, not just online banking
On that "lot of banking on the go" ... here is the story. I witnessed nice and very well mannered US woman at Hilton in Rome. She was red and her hands were trembling. She tried all her 5 US-issued CCs – none worked. I felt bad for her, so we sat on the sofa. We installed one of the online FinApps (W...e) on her phone. She used her bank's app to transfer money to W...e account. Generated online Mastercard. Added to apple wallet. Beeep. Room paid.
Good luck without those apps and mobile phone.
The article starts with Murena, Punkt, Volla which are all based on Android. If you do this, then imho you must mention GrapheneOS, the by far better option (updates, privacy, security, organisation).
Google Pixel with GrapheneOS is the best non-Google phone... ;-)
It's incredibly funny, because a lot of these companies behave the same as the duopoly that people try to get away from. Murena's CEO repeatedly stated that security hardening is only needed for secret agents and criminals (explicitly calling out child porn), pushing the same narratives as the people pushing chat control, age verification, etc.
Volla and Murena are pushing Unified Attestation, a similar system to Google Play Strong Integrity, that they can use to block competition.
Besides that, both Murena and Volla have abysmal security and Volla is mostly in the business of German-washing Chinese smartphones. E.g. their Volla Phone Quintus is a smartphone designed by an Emirates company, largely produced in China, that can be had for 150 Euro new on the ebay.ae .
As much as I like graphene it is literary running on google hardware (atm) and uses asop. Even if it is a really good option is you want to run degoogled and secure android.
You don't need any Google stuff on it. Isolated Play Services is an option, so is Play Store. It's not installed ootb. I don't get why you'd prefer to run less secure options on hardware that isn't on par with Pixels or iPhones and expect to get a secure OS.
I mean.... Android is aosp. And if you want to run degoogled GrapheneOS you just don't install Google services. Out of the box it does NOT contain any - but /e/OS ships with the privileged microG, which means that Android Auto or Google Play Store have privileged access to the phone.
So I'm not sure how can you suggest GOS is less "degoogled" while not shipping anything but allowing to install sandboxed / constrained play services, while comparing it to /e/OS which ships with a privileged plug.
Also, if you want to run a secure android, that's not /e/OS either.
That privileged plug in /e/os makes push notifications work, and you can enable just those and leave Android Auto, G Play Store and whatnot disabled. Not much privacy risk - I think?
On the other hand, while GOS is running Google services sandboxed, they are still running and have access to internet. If you try enabling them only when you need push notifications, they will break - notifications stop coming.
Neither system is optimal - can we please get microG sandboxed on GOS, pretty please?
Ehm, microG on /e/OS is talking to Google all the time. They also use proprietary Google blobs for passing basic Play Integrity. /e/OS also gives a bunch of Google apps (including Google Maps and Android Auto) privileged access (you can find the signing key fingerprints in the source code of the /e/OS microG fork).
No Google Maps or Android Auto on my phones, so I don't care much about privileged access - they have none anyway.
No, microG is definitely not talking to Google all the time, NetGuard would warn me if it did. I would assume it is not even running when I disable it (which is easily done, as opposed to stopping Google Services in GrapheneOS) - but to be fair I didn't actually validate that.
I kind of like GrapheneOS otherwise, this is by far my biggest gripe. I can even survive the icons. But avoiding Google (and other big tech) is the reason I am not on a cheaper and more convenient phone with regular Android, so if GrapheneOS refuses to support an alternative to Google Play Services, I'm not too happy about it. If there are real problems with microG then I'm sure the authors would be interested in a better solution too.
>No Google Maps or Android Auto on my phones, so I don't care much about privileged access - they have none anyway.
You don't seem to understand how play service / MicroG work. Maps or Auto Apps aren't the ones having the privilaged access but Play Service and MicroG.
>NetGuard would warn me if it did. I would assume it is not even running when I disable it
Since play services/microg have higher privileges than NetGuard they could just bypass it.
>But avoiding Google (and other big tech) is the reason I am not on a cheaper and more convenient phone with regular Android, so if GrapheneOS refuses to support an alternative to Google Play Services, I'm not too happy about it. If there are real problems with microG then I'm sure the authors would be interested in a better solution too.
That doesn't make any sense at all. GrapheneOS by default has _0_ Google connections unlike LineageOS, /E/ or any other AOSP fork. MicroG is not an alternative to not using play services at all = actually avoiding Google, but a open source reimplementation that still has all the privacy and security issues of regular play services. GrapheneOS sandboxes Google play services only have the privacy issues since just like with MicroG you still connect to Google = not actually avoiding Google.
The issue with no notification without play services can be easily fixed by not using privacy hostile apps which only work with them.
you are being downvoted because the article considers de-googled versions of android acceptable. and neither are dependent on google in the sense that even if google stopped publishing android source altogether they could continue to develop the versions they already have. that's the whole point of Free Software and Open Source.
Yeah, and that's utter nonsense. Noone is really stepping up to develop Android beyond repackaging it.
If Google decides to remove a feature, GrapheneOS and other forks will end up without it too. If they stop publishing security patches, the forks end up insecure too.
It's just like all the Chrome "forks" when ManifestV2 died. None of them survived for more than a few versions until maintainers lost interest.
Calling any of these Google free is downright lying.
ok, that's probably not the popular opinion, but a reasonable argument.
i think though that the chrome manifestV2 support example is not really applicable to your argument though. chrome still exists, and the removal of a feature is not the same thing as stopping to release sources altogether. if google had stopped releasing chrome sources then some chrome forks with v2 support would still exist. same i believe would be true if google stopped android releases.
same goes for security patches. a lot of effort in forks now is put in keeping up with android (and chrome) releases. if those releases stop then the effort would be able to shift towards security patches. would it be better or worse? hard to say. depends on the resources the forks would manage to gather to do the work.
No, you can't install any 3rd party ManifestV2 extensions in Brave. Neither are they shipping any changes to the browser engine that Google doesn't maintain.
E.g. they tried to implement dark mode website conversion and decided it's too hard to do anything that Google themselves don't do.
so in general the problem is not with supporting v2, the problem is that except for a few special extensions that need v2 features there is no point because all those v2 extensions out there will either be ported to v3 or they will be unmaintained.
the maintainers of chrome forks with v2 support lost interest because the developers of v2 extensions stopped maintaining them.
Sounds very much like HarmonyOS. I was just in a Huawei Store and I think from a UI/UX perspective, despite being quite new, it's incredibly slick and leaps ahead in great design and integration within the HarmonyOS ecosystem. Even saw it being used as Laptop OS and Mobile, the convergence is quite applaudable.
The kindest was that the store's staff advised against buying the device as it's quite painful to use it with Google's apk & blobs, because it drains more battery than when it's integrated with your system services directly. I told him, that maybe rare, but I'm actually happy to not use Google apps as much as possible and especially not within my operating system. Another point he made was that 5G'A is blocked by Google, about that I know nothing to be honest.
Some Android forks are indeed quite nice, but the issue has always been the updating model, upstream maintenance and compatibility. With Harmony OS a large cooperation with the consumers in focus and the one developing the entire hardware stack is behind the OS development and maintenance making it safer against supply-chain hacks and a deeper integration possible than any other OS.
My daily driver is a HarmonyOS NEXT device these days.
I had to find a bunch of workarounds to have payments working (I ended vibe-coding my payments app in ArkTS, don't ask) and messaging apps, and well, I use it with almost 0 compromises on a daily basis. It feels like a breeze of fresh air to know there are other devices and platforms out there that, even if seen as the bad guys here in the western world, can be used as a way to escape the established monopolies.
Maybe I should go for Graphene as a safer option to free myself from GMS and Google/Apple in general, but that would require me buying a Pixel device from Google... which I don't like to be honest.
> Enjoy your freedom, break free from Google and Apple.
You can't escape it.
Your friends and employers and banks use it. The state will soon mandate it for ID. It's the accepted worldwide compute platform, and you're being the nail that sticks out.
Your usage is subject to breaking randomly, being unsupported, losing access or being banned by stepping outside the traffic lines, etc.
They'll use attestation, certs and signing, proprietary APIs, and the scale and might of trillions of dollars to force this.
The only way to "break free" and "enjoy your freedom" is via regulation and -- the better option -- trust busting.
The EU and ASEAN are the best bets for regulation. Getting another Lina Khan that works faster next time is the next best bet for regulation, and possibly a superior outcome that could result in a breakup opening up mobile for true competition.
Being weird in the 0.0001% will not last, nor does it help anyone else escape this monopolistic tyranny.
We need the government to pave the way for dozens of Apple/Google competitors. Or to horizontally split these two companies into dozens of "Baby Bells" that are forced to fight one another.
If a country can provide housing, roads, fire departments, public transit, etc. that might cover 98% of most people's use cases.
But perhaps that country is also fighting wars, committing genocide, perpetrating mass surveillance, propping up an oligarchy, manipulating currency, practicing authoritarianism, etc. ?
There might be points that need to be made and changes that need to be implemented, even if the average citizen or user doesn't directly see the impact or feel immediate exposure.
One of the reasons this is hard is that the general public doesn't understand the greater second and third order effects. And even if they do, they are typically inarticulate at expressing how this is dysregulated and dysfunctional to the broader economy and capitalism.
Luckily, there are plenty of very wealthy people that are disenfranchised by this that will loudly take up arms. Domestic competitors, business leaders, other impacted industries, etc. That's how and why this will change.
Tim Sweeney isn't the only one interested in this.
"I live in a place that hasn't seen progress and still uses physical cash." Isn't really useful to those of us who live in places that don't even use cash. Also, I don't really want to go back to using physical cash thanks.
I don’t have an issue with my bank tracking my purchases. In fact I like it. Not everyone wants to live in a constant state of looking over your shoulder. If we’ve reached that point the problem is not the banks, but the other parties. Going back to old technology is not a solution I want. Regulating the problem areas would be better.
Fully agree, I like not having to deal with cache. Fully digital payments and contactless payment are so much nicer than cash (in my opinion). I just want to be able to do contactless payments on my GrapheneOS phone and not get locked out of it because Google decided it's a good way of forcing out competition.
Hasn’t seen progress? Portland has a fantastic transit system and all the amenities you could want from a modern city. Yet cash is common, a few of the best places are even cash only.
I’ve found more places going cashless in Portland than are cash only. The one cash only place I regularly visited for decades finally gave in and started accepting cards.
That is strange, because Oregon has required cash to be allowed as a form of payment statewide since 2022 (SB 1565). There are a few exceptions but most public facing businesses are covered. Maybe they will do cash if asked but they don’t make it obvious?
Maybe I am lucky in the USA, but every bank I’ve ever done business with can be accessed through a PC and web browser. If any of my banks should decide to remove that option, I just move over to one of the other thousands of banks in the USA.
I keep seeing this, but I've never signed into a single one of my banks, mortgage companies, stock brokers, or credit card companies on my phone. The phone might be used to get a code for 2FA via text, but that's the extent of it. Everything is done on my PC through a dedicated browser specifically for financial purposes. This applies to Chase, Fidelity, Schwab, Wells Fargo, Marcus, Morgan Stanley, Amex, and more. So theoretically there's no reason a Linux OS on a phone can't do any of these things without Google or Apple by simply masquerading as a PC.
I think the disconnect comes from the European vs the US perspective. In Europe, banks in many countries require smartphone apps for 2FA (unless you still have one of the old authenticators that you can hold on until the battery dies). One of the reasons is that PSD2 requires two-factor authentication:
My guess is that given that banks are liable in many cases of account compromise where the user did not do anything wrong, they generally don't use SMS or e-mail auth because it is relatively easy to compromise (e.g. no or bad encryption, downgrade attacks, etc). Also, doing 2FA through a smartphone app is much cheaper for them than keeping a fleet of authenticators running.
Luckily, it looks like PSD3 is going to require access without a smartphone too:
Require payment services providers to ensure that all users can benefit from methods to perform SCA which are adapted to their needs and situations and, in particular, that those methods do not depend on one single technology, device or mechanism, for instance on the possession of a smartphone.
I use a smartphone less than most people. Things I already could not do without a Google or Apple phone:
Use some banking apps. In fact I cannot use one banking app I otherwise would because it will only work if you have no non-store apps installed at all.
A regulatory requirement to prove my ID without using the mobile app would be a 20 min+ each way drive (plus walking, time doing it etc.) to another town.
> The EU and ASEAN are the best bets for regulation.
Did you read the recent HN stories about the EU's age verification app that will only work on attested phones? Lots of other governments (EU and non-EU) doping similar things.
> We need the government to pave the way for dozens of Apple/Google competitors. Or to horizontally split these two companies into dozens of "Baby Bells" that are forced to fight one another.
I have very little confidence that is likely. Politically governments are far more pro-big business and anti-competition than they have been in a long time.
> Being weird in the 0.0001% will not last, nor does it help anyone else escape this monopolistic tyranny.
Every single person who does not go along, is a a political and commercial argument not to remove alternatives. If I use a website and an app to bank or buy something, it pushes up the stats for the web app vs the mobile app.
> EU's age verification app that will only work on attested phones?
This is not a single unified front. Multiple battles are ongoing simultaneously.
There are strong proponents of anti-monopoly and digital sovereignty in government, just as there are those that want to push for a surveillance state.
Here are some recent and non-insignificant things that the EU and UK have required Google and Apple do:
- Support "side loaded" apps (as Google works to remove the ability)
- Standardize on USB-C
- Force alternative payments platforms
- Force Apple to stop requiring WebKit and WebKit runtimes
They're just getting started!
> I have very little confidence that is likely.
I have a great deal of confidence that the world is ready for this. Every non-US nation wants to break the stranglehold US tech has on their countries. The EU, UK, and ASEAN have a tremendous amount of power here.
We also have a huge reservoir of political support for breaking up tech monopolies inside the US. Lots of high profile politicians are ready to go to work on this, on both sides of the aisle.
Moreover, you have every single other company on the planet that wants this duopoly fractured. Entire industries that salivate over this.
It's just a matter of time and making sure we make these points articulate and loudly heard.
This is far more effective than trying to hack your device and proclaim "year of linux on android 2030". That doesn't work. It's a miserable experience and doesn't help a single other person.
> This is far more effective than trying to hack your device and proclaim "year of linux on android 2030". That doesn't work.
It doesn't work for you. There are lots of people in this thread dailying a Linux device, it's a perfectly valid choice if you're not conjoined at the hip with mobile apps. Your assertion that it helps nobody is obviously dishonest projection.
Now, PostmarketOS won't rescue the billions of apathetic people on the planet, but why should it? Those people will sabotage themselves over and over again for the sake of convenience. Even banning iPhones/Android in your country won't fix the issue, we saw that in China. Your only solution is to advocate for yourself, you can't rely on the greater hacker consciousness to instinctively protect your user experience.
>Your friends and employers and banks use it. The state will soon mandate it for ID.
You just buy a separate, cheap Android/Google phone for all these things. Emphasis on buying the cheapest one possible, so Google and Apple aren't making much money off you.
Yup. I have not tried using a non-GoogleAndroid or iOS smartphone, but what you describe perfectly reflects what I experienced when I went started to work for a large employer 16 y ago. I had been using Linux as my main OS on desktops and mobile computers for at least 15 y by then. Slowly the grind of hacking my system to access the VPN, check email on their Exchange server, open MS Word docs.. it all pushed me to MacOS from about 2015 - 2021. Eventually I could not abide by Apple's incompatible hold on my data, Gatekeeper (I really hate the concept that they must approve software I want to run on my own hardware) and the unrepairability of their machines.. so I am now on Win 11. Right now, considering the trade offs, I think this is the best choice. I see a lot of people extolling Linux lately, so maybe it is time to try going back.
Back OT, smartphones were always less open than the general purpose computers of yore. And it looks like they are increasingly a requirement for participating in many societies. In general I don't find this a good thing, but have little faith that regulators will 'solve' is because they have their own pitfalls (recent examples from EU: age verification and chat control).
They are also less than 2 months away from the first deliveries of the Jolla Phone 2026, a new SailfishOS device they have designed and built from scratch. Over the past years the official Sailfish experience has largely been relying on Sony Open Device program - a co-operation which hasn't always been very smooth for the customers.
I have been daily driving SFOS on a Sony Xperia 10 III for the past 3 years and it works well for me. I think the 10 III is the current "peak Sailfish" at least among the officially supported devices but this should change once the new phones roll out in early July. For new orders of the 2026 phone they are currently aiming for delivery in September in the supported markets (EU, UK, Norway and Switzerland).
I have rage-quit apple for a C2 and the muscle memory still kicks in after months. The ergonomy of Sailfish is sometimes bizarre, the little top left dot for navigation for example. Still it does everything I need, just with a very bad camera. Let's hope the 2026 will fix that.
Oh but you don't usually need to care for the dot itself so much as it's just an indicator that you can do a middle swipe left/right to move between stacked pages.
I've been on Apple for a couple of years after a decade on Android and I still haven't internalized all of iOS's inconsistencies. But admittedly I don't do much on my phone besides SMS, calendar, and maps, so using other apps is always a bit of initial relearning.
The majority of these phones are running a modified version of Android. I wouldn’t call that non-Google. There is a total lack of diversity in the phone market. I’ve been trying to find a minimal feature phone for my kids and looked at Nokia, but non-Android Nokia phones don’t support enough US cellular bands.
Many years later and I'm still bitter that the tech press laughed Windows Phone out of the room straight to its demise. Yes it had very little developer support but at some point things were looking up. It was just the butt of too many jokes from influential people.
A third ecosystem right now would have been amazing
> The Windows phone didn't make it due to Microsoft failing to compete
As I recall Microsoft threw quite a lot of resources into Windows Phone.
My then-employer had apps for Android and Apple, and Microsoft literally paid for us to port it to Windows Phone. Microsoft brought Nokia, who had dominated the industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
And Microsoft was early to the mobile party too - you could get an iPaq H3660 running Microsoft Pocket PC 2000, seven years before the first iPhone. Keyboardless Fujitsu and Compaq tablets ran Windows XP Tablet PC Edition in 2003, seven years before the iPad.
They weren't as good as what came later. Chunky, fragile devices, resistive touchscreens, stylus input with a tiny on-screen keyboard, worse batteries, worse wifi, barely any mobile data. And at the time, $500 seemed hugely expensive compared to a normal phone, even if these days there are plenty of $1000 smartphones.
But there's an alternate reality where Microsoft had a 'first mover advantage' and captured a big slice of the smartphone-and-tablet market.
It was Microsofts fault. I had a Windows Phone just to play with it (besides an iPhone), Nokia Lumia. Just when Windows Phone 7 was getting some traction, Microsoft axed it and rebooted the ecosystem. None of the popular phones that ran Windows Phone 7 got the Windows Phone 8 update. To make it worse, Windows Phone 8 apps were not compatible with Windows Phone 7.
So Microsoft basically said: "as a thanks for being an early adopter, you know have to buy a completely new phone again". For reference, Windows Phone 7 was initially released in October 2010 and Windows Phone 8 in October 2012. After that many (technically-inclined) early adopters left.
Zune was also... not good. I was given one. It was defective. I think I got a warranty replacement and gave it to a friend who basically never used it as far as I know.
Nadella's Azure play basically saved Microsoft in my opinion. They totally blew mobile and desktop Windows and Office were declining markets and XBox was a sideshow.
I long for something like the first gen Zune that just worked. Great aesthetics and screen for the time. Replaced with an iPod Touch which was nice but entirely forgettable.
>> It was just the butt of too many jokes from influential people.
I loved my Windows phones (especially near the end when you were getting Pixel & Apple level hardware for pennies on the dollar), but is this really true? They had limited hardware partners (and the disaster with Nokia), lukewarm carrier deals, absolutely no apps, but who were these "influential people" who made fun of it? If anything it seemed more like no-one was even aware of it. I remember the little press they did get being quite positive on the devices & OS, while critical of the broader ecosystem, which seems fair.
Given what Microsoft has done with the state of Windows with built-in telemetry, the attempts to add Recall, and now AI features they are adding to many customers dismay, you have them doing anything different with Windows Phone if it had gained traction than Apple and Google?
Lack of applications. They decided to fix that by adding an Android subsystem, and nobody wanted to publish their Android applications to the Amazon store even with Amazon throwing gobs of money at publishers and only some APIs having been moved into Google Play Services.
Eh, Microsoft got bored of developing their own browser and just pushes Chromium on their users now. Probably they would have just turned Windows Phones into another Android too.
At this point, I am thinking about connecting a stock Android phone to a server and access it via scrcpy from my laptop whenever I need to interact with some stupid app bs that could've just been a website.
At least this way I can keep the majority of bloat away from primary communications device.
2017 is also the year ChromeBooks first outsold Macs (by value, not units). 2017 was the Year of Linux on the Desktop, and the penguin taleban didn't even notice.
I’m surprised that the Seeker is not even mentioned. I understand it’s Solana, it’s blockchain, whatever people think about it... to me it’s the only serious attempt at creating an app store that can compete with apple or google. What’s the point of independent hardware if the whole sw stack is them?
All of the copy seems to be built around Solana, "Web3" and crypto. It doesn't seem to have any appeal outside of that. It's not clear what the software even is. The docs [0] seem to indicate it's just Android, with some SDKs for interacting with the "Web3" stuff.
This isn't a "serious attempt at creating an app store that can compete with apple or google", it's just another "Web3" project. It's exciting to people within that ecosystem and utterly uninteresting to anybody who isn't.
That's so sad. I even clicked around on their page to find out how I could contribute as a developer, but their gitlab repo seems abandoned since way before the latest release and all "how to get involved" articles eventually point to 404 pages.
I've been the owner of a murena (fairphone + /e/OS) for many years.
I've never had the opportunity to check its repairability, that darn thing hasn't broken yet.
I moved to a Fairphone 6 with /e/OS a few weeks ago. I can do everything I need to, everything I want to, and with more control over my digital footprint and what data is being collected about me. I've completely moved off Google services.
The OS experience is pretty impressive for not being made by an evil megacorp. The hardware is fairly midrange, but midrange today is last year's top end, and unless you're some expert photographer or needing phone VR or whatever, it's a great, normal smartphone experience.
I'm donating to the open source devs who make my apps, and they respond when I ask for useful features instead of always enshittifying it. For the corpo apps, it pulls from Google Play.
Only to the extent you use Micro-G, and Micro-G mitigates a large portion of the Google data harvesting. The built in App Lounge does not require a Google login to pull downloads from the Play Store, so it's possible to remain entirely anonymous to Google.
They also run proprietary Google blobs in a privileged process to pass basic Play Integrity and give certain Google apps higher privileges than the normal Android sandbox.
Aside from Google, Fairphone 6 (both the stock OS and /e/OS) ship with proprietary, Chinese TCL blobs for image processing (most likely also privileged).
Besides that, /e/OS often uses way outdated Linux kernel versions and firmware bundles with many known CVEs and old major Android versions, having many unfixed vulnerabilities that are not marked high/critical (ASBs only give you high/critical fixes).
Fairphone does not have a secure enclave, only TrustZone. So, secrets can be extracted using frequently-found side-channel accounts. The lack of a secure enclave + the many available CVEs, it will probably fail within seconds when using data extraction tools like Cellebrite, even when the phone is locked. So better not bring your phone to demonstrations or border crossings.
But hey, it doesn't matter, because Murena's CEO says security hardening is only for spies and pedophiles.
(Friends don't recommend friends Fairphone or /e/OS.)
I would highly recommend getting a device with official support for the best experience. I wouldn't get any phone not on their supported devices list unless it were free of charge, and even then I'd be a bit sad.
I've only looked into one device en detail, the Jolla.
Okay, no touch typing, maps apps don't start or don't find your location, WhatsApp probably doesn't work and I guess I don't have to start with banking apps.
They are all most likely trivially compromised. Most of these phones do not have secure enclaves (which e.g. the iPhone had since 2013 and Google Pixel for ages as well) and are usually way behind with Linux security patches, firmware security patches, Android patches outside ASBs. For instance some of the alternatives in the article are routinely 2-5 years behind on Linux and firmware security updates.
They keep saying "If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product". Okay, all fine and well.
But what will my phone still actually be able to do if / when I stop my subscription? Not a single clear answer besides "[…] gradual feature deactivation, and ultimately reverting to a device running AOSP".
> But what will my phone still actually be able to do if / when I stop my subscription?
I have two of them and use one as my spare phone. I wrote this article.
As far as I can tell: all that happens is that you lose your encrypted email account and cloud storage. That's it. Otherwise, the phone continues working as before.
No way they employ a minor dark pattern with their cookie pop-up
YIKES tying privacy hardware to a subscription. Maybe they’re two-year burners then, like a partially inverted warranty.
Gradual feature deactivation should be fine if it’s incredibly transparent. So they lose too many sales if they just charge the whole lifetime customer value right upfront, and subscription is the solution.
< it was 18 cm long, 9 cm wide, and 2.8 cm thick, and weighed just over a third of a kilo. (For our readers in Liberia, Myanmar and elsewhere, that's 7 × 3½ × 1.1 inches, and ¾ lb.)
What I miss a lot is to be able to have a kind of "virtual" android running in a cloud instance. That could look legit to Google to not be restricted by integrity check and all.
But there I could share access to my single instance to my multiple non Google non play store devices, eventually sharing access between multiple persons...
Like for example, every crappy things like banks nowadays requires their own shitty app. It might be a pain in the ass to share between phones or to reinstall if you lose or change your phone. And all these useless app consume really a lot of storage resulting in my phone's being always full.
That would be perfect to access it in a kind of remote access for use once in a while.
I wrote the article. My daily driver is a Xiaomi Poco F5.
It is near the end of its life now -- struggles to last the day -- and it was stuffed with bloatware, but it was good for the price in 2023.
My previous handset was an Umidigi F2 which was much better value for money. I will probably go back to them, or another budget brand such as Dooyoo, Blackview, Ulefone, etc.
The challenge isn't buying it, the challenge is being able to do phone things with it.
Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone. Most things will work but it takes one critical service that doesn't have a viable workaround, and you're forced to buy (and possibly carry) a "mainstream" phone just for that.
Banking, government, authentication, postal service and public transit apps are just some of the common categories that will, in the end, force you to use one of those systems, unless governments mandate viable alternatives. The QR-code based recaptcha that's being introduced will be another brick in the wall.
As an individual, it feels like my options are to either submit or try to live a hermit's life, bringing endless suffering and exclusion to myself.
> Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone.
Fight this, fight it hard. It is not acceptable to have to pay a monthly fee to a giant corporation to participate in unrelated things.
I do have a cell phone (grudgingly) but I go way out of my way to never use it. I tell every business I only have a landline phone (which I do have). I will not use anything that supposedly requires a phone, give me an alternative or you're not getting my business.
While I don't have the full ethical commitment of RMS, I can be very obstinate and will push this hard.
> It is not acceptable to have to pay a monthly fee to a giant corporation to participate in unrelated things.
Do you always have to pay a monthly fee with a smartphone? Are there pre-paid SIM cards?
I have a cheap pre-paid plan (US Mobile). It's still a monthly fee though.
> Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone
Hyperbole doesn’t help. I’m a 44 year old former software engineer now with a modest social media following (100k per platform). I don’t have a phone.
I’ve never had a smart phone, last dumb phone gone in 2015.
I have to hassle my bank to let me use email instead of SMS for 2FA, and I hand jot notes for driving directions sometimes.
Otherwise, I’m immensely happy not to have one.
This is the way! I do not have a smartphone. I print maps, use email, print boarding cards, do my banking and shopping with a web browser, pay with cash or a debit card.
I think people have been brain washed to believe they can no longer live life without being enslaved by a surveillance device.
Lost? Ask for directions. Need a map? Go to a hotel or a tourist center, or print one in advance.
The thing is, most people do want to have a smartphone. Either because living without requires an amount of effort they are not interested in or because they actually like using a smartphone for certain things. Personally, I like having the web and maps accessible from the palm of my hand everywhere I go.
So, the solution is not to suggest that people should not use a smartphone. That ship has sailed. I agree that it should still be possible to do things without for people that do not want to use one. But you are not going to convince more than a small percentage of the population to abandon smartphones.
Instead we should focus on making alternative smartphone ecosystems (AOSP can be a starting point) and getting technology that is used to shut out competition (e.g. Google Play Strong Integrity) banned.
Yeah, this whole discussion thread is essentially irrelevant to the underlying topic because of exactly what you said.
It’s just the typical HN humble brag thread about being present and owning no technology.
Awesome that these folks don’t own a phone and give their landline to businesses. I love that for them.
But I like my smartphone, GPS directions, digital wallets, streaming music, etc. I just don’t want it to be controlled by two companies. I want there to be a healthy market of multiple options including open source alternatives.
This for me has been achieved on my desktop and laptop but not yet on my smartphone.
Walking into a hotel lobby to get a map printed seems like a much greater surveillance risk than looking up directions on my phone. The cameras, the printer, the hotel staff, the other hotel guests; they’re all third party to your private information. Is that really any better than Apple or Google telemetry?
Sorry Pale but I doubt you are either James Bond or Edward Snowden. Chill out. I once visit Japan, and you get papers with full of information and maps where stuff line out the direction for you ALL the time... You see there are alternatives and in this special use case you even gain privacy by blending in with all the other crowd.
When you go on holiday, do you have to find an Internet café to print off your boarding pass for the flight home? Or do you select destinations covered by airlines that allow you to get a boarding pass more than 48 hours in advance?
They said they don't use a phone. You can do online check-in on any device with a browser. I'm sure you can point to a single airline that only offers it through a native mobile app but that'd be an extreme exception.
> Internet café to print off your boarding pass for the flight home?
You can print the boarding pass at the airline kiosk at the airport, at least in any US airport I've been to. I always do this.
As noted in a peer post I try very hard to do everything without a phone. I do have a phone but don't want to depend on it.
Boarding passes in particular seem very unreliable on a phone. I always have the paper boarding pass printed at the airport but for curiosity I check the phone app boarding pass. More than 50% of the time the phone app boarding pass hangs from bad connectivity while standing at the gate and I can't retrieve it. Fortunately I always have the printed boarding pass so that always works. Paper does not rely on internet connectivity so it will always be infinitely more reliable.
> in any US airport I've been to
So that is half of 1%.
Now try in any one of the other 194 countries in the world.
I, sadly, live in a small island and fly a lot. I haven't been able to do this in years.
Pardon me but you could have in many cases have cached the data. I honor your strong commitment. I most often use digital because "it's easier" for them. But not for me. Sometimes I make fun and use printouts of their digital system just for the lulz. But back to cached data. Most often the mobil application catches data upfront and still be valid later even offline. Just as a reminder. Peace.
Most hotels would be happy to print your boarding pass for free.
This is actually exactly what I it when I was in this kind of situation.
I really have the impression that using a smartphone makes a lot people much more dumb with respect to seeing obvious solutions for their problems.
Which airline requires you to print your own boarding pass and won't let you on the plane without a phone? Now I haven't flown in years but last time I did, the normal procedure was to show up at the airport either with your printed ticket or just your reference code and ID, and either use a kiosk or talk to a person to get your boarding pass, and also to check in your bags.
Ryanair or Wizz air. You can have them print it for you in the airport but they charge 55 euros for it.
Ryanair don’t charge you 55 euros, at least not from what I’m reading [1]. It’s completely free, at the airport, provided you’ve checked in already, which from my experience can be done up to 24 hours prior to your flight. Plenty of time to use a hotel computer, someone else’s device or find an internet cafe if you aren’t completely disorganised.
I’m not sure about Wizz Air, I’ve never flown with them and their website isn’t quite as clear as Ryanairs.
[1] https://www.ryanair.com/ie/en/lp/explore/digital-boarding-pa...
Most airports have kiosks to print boarding passes. It isn't the end of the world.
Also luggage check-in counters will print a boarding pass.
How could it be hyperbole when you give two examples of the increasing pain?
GP said “can no longer exist”.
Listing a few challenges of a phoneless life doesn’t negate the point that one can still exist without a phone, even in 2026.
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Because these two examples are tiny in comparison with the decrease in surveillance you will get, and the example you set for your fellow men, and just spreading the norm in society that ubiquitous surveillance is wrong and that we can live ethical lives without being slaves and chained to the government and corporations.
You still use the internet. Just avoiding a mobile phone is not a magic pill against surveillance.
> You still use the internet. Just avoiding a mobile phone is not a magic pill against surveillance.
Very true. But it is a huge first step.
Undoubtedly having a phone would increase convenience in my life. I’d also have to go to work more to pay for it which would seriously inconvenience my snowboarding time.
I’d also spend more of my life staring at a small device instead of talking to people or just enjoying the trees, mountains and rivers.
On the whole, I much prefer it this way.
Here in France, my bank won't let me 2FA into my account (i have to physically go to the bank every single time i need something), and i can't get car ownership papers for a car i legally bought from the registered owner 2 years ago due to the administration closing down 100% of their offices in favor of online forms (tried the online forms many times, as well as registered letter to the headquarters).
This anecdata probably says more about french techno-fascism and politics of destroying public services than about how phones have somehow become mandatory because of society evolving in general. I'm still very happy not to have a phone.
A big issue for me was events that require digital only tickets. I haven't been able to work around that yet.
If I have an issue with my phone when travelling I usually tell them beforehand and luckily all of them have figured out a workaround thus far.
How do you post on social media without a phone?
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I mean, I cant rent city bicycles without a phone in a lot of cities or use uber or lyft but okay.
Or pay for parking in many european cities. So I guess you are not forced into a hermit life as long as... you are already happy with your hermit life.
I live in a small town. There is no uber or Lyft, or QR code parking. I ride my bike a lot. Snowboard nearly everyday in the winter and there is cell service in the mountains.
I lived in mega cities for 10 years, I’ll never do it again.
Call in hermit life if you want, I call it the simple life where enjoyment and happiness are the priority
US cities as well, now that you mention it. Open lots often require scanning a QR code to pay. They watch cameras and tow your car very quickly if you don't.
Maybe the reason this guy gets away with not having a smartphone is that his friends use their smartphones for him whenever things like this pop up?
I live in a small town with no such nonsense
You're incredibly, even astoundingly dismissive and judgemental towards the 80% of Americans who do not live in rural areas. Again - 80%.
> Hyperbole doesn’t help.
For MANY Americans, it's not possible to function normally in society without a smartphone. That's not hyperbole, but your argument was.
It's mind blowing that we've allowed the development of a de-factor personal ID device absolutely controlled by an oligopoly of two private corporations.
Do people realize that this means either of these companies, since they can remotely turn off your account or device, can deplatform you from society including from many government services?
It's an astounding amount of power we have simply ceded to these two companies.
I know you are not going to like it, but it started when they took our guns. Now they took our jobs. Next is unified minimal global personal tax (seems to be decided at 30%). On unrealised capital gains. And phones? That's a smoke screen for you to look other way. (And to watch you all the time too)
> It's an astounding amount of power we have simply ceded to these two companies.
We didn't do it, our representatives did it for us, mostly unaware of what they were doing and still without a clue about what to do with whatever they've created. No they can't, and they won't, academia BS isn't helping anyone either.
> Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone.
Is it the phone or just the mobile operating system? I do most of my phone stuff on a tablet that I keep at home - where it's safer. I am currently using an Android phone (without an account) for GPS, phone calls (contacts), internet, games, email (alternatives to google), etc...
But for those critical and sensitive apps (banking, etc)... I consider those to be too dangerous to be walking around with.
So any phone will serve (I can wait to get home to check email for example).
That doesn't solve for services that by definition need to be accessed on the go, e.g. public transit, parcel pickup, luggage lockers, rental bikes, restaurant menus, paying for parking, etc. (some of these may not mandate phones in your area yet or may allow mobile web alternatives, these are just examples where I've seen strong pushes towards apps or at leas in many places).
Out of all the examples you have presented everything had worked somehow without phones not so long ago.
Maybe, with the exception of online public transit status streaming. And public transit still works without it.
This is the way. Don't go, or if you don't know, ask for a menu, if that does not exist, ask for a phone from the staff. Have used all of these methods with excellent results. The restaurants wants to sell, they will find you a menu or a phone.
Yes, absolutely!
On the occasions where I've been to a restaurant that tries to pull off the QR nonsense, I just ask for a menu, I tell them I don't have a phone.
I've yet to see one where they can't find me an actual menu. If it ever happens, I'll walk out and be very annoyingly loud at letting them know why they lost my business.
Pushing for your rights isn't always pleasant, but it's important.
> everything had worked somehow without phones not so long ago
This is called change :-) Slowly boiling the frogs.
I hate when people respond like this, I recently did three months with a dumb phone to attempt to get away from iOS/Android in a major US city and it was impossible. All of the things that made it impossible used to be possible without a smart phone, but they aren’t anymore and they’re not magically back when you try and navigate life without one.
Things like paid surface parking lots. Used to you could pay at a machine or a lot attendant, well there aren’t attendants anymore and few people use the machines so there isn’t enough incentive to fix them when they’re vandalized.
Some restaurants have printed backup menus but some straight up don’t. Printing menus costs money, why spend it if they don’t have to?
Digital signage that tells you how far away transit is, whether there are currently adjusted times, etc. is a lower priority now that everyone has maps in their pocket that track the transit in real time.
Showing up to a concert early to convince the ticket window to give you a physical ticket for a digital only event, and then they want email proof or to visibly see an app on the smartphone that is glitching is ridiculous.
The list of tiny cuts goes on and on. All of them worked without smartphones but the incentives flipped and now you can’t escape and you don’t realize the backups are gone until you try it for a while. It sucks.
Maybe living in the “big city” sucks harder than I thought.
I can and have gone days without a phone in “semirural” areas (not even Amish) and have been fine.
Restaurants without printed menus are just not places I’ll go.
We'd need regulation for that. Either a mandate that the digital option is optional, and services must have an alternative means, or a mandate that any app based service also has an equally viable mobile web option, making the app optional.
Tbh I see no reason why all of that couldn't just be a website instead of a native app. Menus should just be a website, transit should still be offering physical metro cards, the lockers & bikes could just as easily be a website.
Folks on HN won't like this ida but quite frankly I'd go a step further and have a mandate that services like these must offer an API for the public to use in order to bring their own app/solution. It'd be nice to not be limited to exclusively first party options. How ridiculous is it that there are so many different pay for parking apps, when if all of them just offered an API I could roll my one all in one parking web app, etc.
I'd even pay a subscription, like many of these services offer already, for API access instead.
There was a time back in covid days where you had to have an app on your phone to go through customs clearance in Canada.
I flew all over europe, no smart phone, no mask. I printed my own doctors notes and corona passports and they worked flawlessly everywhere.
Towards the end, I copied other peoples QR-codes and printed them out, and that worked nicely as well.
I flew from Canada to Australia during deep Covid ($15k flight, mandatory locked in hotel for 10 days for $3k, etc)
I don’t have a phone.
I refuse to believe that's true. That they were denying Dorothy (92) from going through customs because she couldn't use an app. That's an extraordinary claim.
If they weren't denying Dorothy, that means you did not need an app.
It was compulsory during COVID and it became optional later
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ArriveCAN
From what I'm reading, non-users weren't and couldn't have actually been denied entry. It wouldn't have held up in court either. They could be made to quarantine.
> Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone
If my phone breaks, I will die? :)
Perhaps it's this spreading of this lie that it's impossible to live without a phone that is contributing to the problem
No, but you will likely be inconvenienced to a similar level as losing your house keys, and lose access to important services. You won't immediately die, because most people can survive for quite some time on nothing but questionable river water and a piece of cardboard under a bridge, but there is a difference between survival and existing in society.
> No, but you will likely be inconvenienced to a similar level as losing your house keys, and lose access to important services.
Because you made yourself dependent on these smartphone-only services beforehand. Don't do that.
More likely the services transformed into smartphone only when the user wasn't looking. Switching costs are not zero.
You can exist, but life will be as inconvenient as it was in the 1990s (though importantly, it didn't seem inconvenient at the time, it was just the way things were).
> as inconvenient as it was in the 1990s
That's not true, because in the 1990s there was no presumption that everyone has a major-vendor smartphone. Now, the ways to do things without a smartphone are often disappearing, so things are more inconvenient. For example, ticket machines and printed schedules for public transit are going away in many places.
I don't have any usable public transit where I live but the place where I'm familiar with it is Chicago and all the train stations have ticket machines. Bus stops no, but you can pay on the bus with a payment card, transit card, or an app. Cash fares are no longer accepted for some time.
I miss the old tokens they used to use. So simple, anonymous, easy to share with traveling companions, though could be annoying when you ran out.
I disagree. You cannot even book appointments in a lot of banks today, a thing you could do in the 90s. Like that, a lot of services are unavailable without a smartphone and its non-smartphone equivalent is not available anymore.
This.
1. My bank doesn't allow to go in person without an in-app taken appointment.
2. My nephew can't play football in his team, because the team has an app to book/signal your availability. No other way.
3. Half of restaurants in my area do not have non-QR code menus, they just don't.
4. McDonald's will make me pay the scam pricing you get without the app.
5. My doctor gives documentation only and exclusively in digital form, on a special application that doesn't even have a desktop equivalent.
6. My fiance's office badges are smartphone-based. You cannot enter otherwise.
7. All the software she uses at work requires frequent Google/Apple/third party authentication.
8. Increasingly more European airlines exclusively accept in-app check in and documentation. You cannot print it. Ryanair's one of them.
I could go on for longer.
1. I don't know any bank that does, but in any case voting with your wallet is always an option.
2., 3., 4. Voting with your wallet once again.
5. That would be illegal in many jurisdictions, some countries even have a centralized systems for doctors to upload documentation (that you access using your ID as an authentication token).
6., 7. Unless the employer provides said smartphone, that would be illegal to require in most countries.
8. Vote with your wallet, also all such airlines can print a boarding pass for free if you do the checkin on the website.
Half of the voting with your wallet are blind to the fact that you can't vote anything else.
My village has one football team, not N. There's one burger place, not two.
For the rest, appealing to legality is pointless, I ain't bringing my family doctor to a tribunal over this, this is real life and me being petty for not wanting to use a phone. Being right years from now is beyond pointless.
Sounds like you have given up without a fight and deserve whatever you get.
epolanski@ is, unfortunately, right. You may try to "walk away" if you are not interested in the end result. If the fact of walking away for you is more important / feels better than actually doing what you came for. (And don't get me started on how girls look at you when you start fishing for petty change in your pockets - that seriously limits your dating pool LOL)
As someone with a long term partner who shares my use of cash, at least for some things, you don’t want to date people who look down on you for your choice of payment. Red flag. Waste of time.
Have some self respect. Don’t date people who aren’t mostly aligned with your values.
"Have some self respect". Sure. Which hand respects you more: right or left one? ;-)
I know this was a joke, but if you’re having trouble meeting someone who shares your values, maybe try looking in different places than you would expect (they don’t have to share your interests, that’s less important than you would think as long as you can bend to each other) or reevaluating what you think your “type” is. Many people chase a certain type of person, and only after they end up with someone totally different do they realize that their attraction to that type was some kind of pathology, perhaps replaying trauma from childhood.
Ain't life simple as you make it?
I recently skipped a concert at the YouTube theater in LA because my phone is too old for Ticketmaster or Hollywood Park apps. Even though you can go and buy a ticket at the box office they have to send you the ticket to the app. No option to print it or any non-app way.
Oh that true!
I've been in multiple clubs/events that you can enter exclusively after having downloaded the app.
> 1. My bank doesn't allow to go in person without an in-app taken appointment.
What about other banks?
> 3. Half of restaurants in my area do not have non-QR code menus, they just don't.
That's crazy. I don't think I even saw 50% during COVID. Must be barely 5% of places that are QR only in the UK.
> 4. McDonald's will make me pay the scam pricing you get without the app.
Isn't it a scam even with the app pricing? The quality is so so bad these days I feel scammed even paying £1.50 for a burger.
> 5. My doctor gives documentation only and exclusively in digital form, on a special application that doesn't even have a desktop equivalent.
> 6. My fiance's office badges are smartphone-based. You cannot enter otherwise.
Are those compatible with disability laws?
> 8. Increasingly more European airlines exclusively accept in-app check in and documentation. You cannot print it. Ryanair's one of them.
That is not true for Ryanair.
https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-gb/articles/12889016882065-Ca... :
"You can check in on the Ryanair.com website or on the mobile App"
"If you checked in but cannot present your boarding pass on the app when you arrive at the airport, you will receive a free of charge boarding pass."
(This it is more difficult as their appears to be even fewer staff around than before)
Also:
"You can check in for your flight at the airport, but you will have to pay an airport check-in fee per passenger to cover the extra cost of the airport check-in service. Please see our Table of Fees."
(Admittedly very very expensive)
I flew with RyanAir several times after they introduced a "mandatory" app boarding pass, never had problems with check-in agents just printing the boarding pass for free (after doing the web check-in). Had to pretend my phone died once, in all other cases they just printed the pass no questions asked.
(Depending on whether you mean "can't exist without a phone" or "can't exist without an Apple/Google monopoly ecosystem")
3. you don't need an Apple or Google account to scan a QR code and open a web page.
4. Why is it "scam" pricing? You're getting a discount from giving them your information with an app. Like Kindle charging more to remove adverts. Dislikable, scummy not scammy. (i.e. they aren't taking your money and providing nothing and then disappearing).
6. I think in the UK / Europe the employer would have to provide your fiancee with a company phone so she could access her workplace, and could not legally require her to have a personal phone with an employer managed/controlled app on it.
7. Does Google/Apple authentication require a Google/Apple app? I see "sign in with Google" on web pages on my Windows desktop. Google Authenticator app is a fairly standard OTP passcode app which can be done in many other programs, password vaults and browser plugins.
8. Ryanair says you can check-in on their website: https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-us/articles/12888891271953-Ho...
> 8. Ryanair says you can check-in on their website: https://help.ryanair.com/hc/en-us/articles/12888891271953-Ho...
Last year I could check in on their website, but needed the app for the boarding card. They might have changed that, but that article doesn't make it clear.
But the boarding pass you need in app.
Or you're free to queue at 5 am for your 8.30 am free for an hour+at their counter.
First and foremost: I'm sorry for you. Living in a participation-dictated-by-app hellscape sucks. But most people only realize this when the magical one or two steps happen that force them to "touch grass".
With regards to specific points that match with my reality:
> "My fiance's office badges are smartphone-based. You cannot enter otherwise."
I worked for a company where that was a thing. Easy fix: They issued me (and others) a smartphone for that. And that slab never left the workplace either; I fetched/returned it before/after my day by notifying the security desk.
Everything else on your list is either irrelevant or unnacceptable to me, or simply illegal where I live.
You would be PIP'd next week today. Nobody is dealing with that anymore. Is it suppressing our rights? Yes. Absolutely. And it will get worse. And no, people will not revolt. And you will be left behind, on the other side of the gates, after all your team has gone through. Happy to do it? Rich enough to do it? I'm not ...
> 3. Half of restaurants in my area do not have non-QR code menus, they just don't.
Not knocking this list, the shit is real. But I just had a lovely imaginary conversation with a server asking them what they would recommend and then trying something brand new.
When I go to a restaurant that has QR-only menus, I won't make a scene about it, but it lowers the mental rating I give the place and I'm less likely to return.
I suggest making a scene about it.
I've never encountered such a restaurant but will definitely make a scene about it if it happens.
If you do make a scene - please do not order soup. LOL
I've had this conversation for real. The server's recommendation was that I scan the QR code.
That was my last time going to that restaurant.
That's happened to me a lot, to get a 503 service unavailable from a restaurant server.
Joke's on the server. The robot that will replace their job soon will be more than happy to regale you with any hallucinated information you would like about the subtleties of the menu.
This might be country specific? Specifically dependent on laws in the fields of consumer-protection and keeping things universally accessible.
I don't own a smartphone. I have never owned a smartphone. There are inconveniences, and big organizations definitely try to push you toward the way of doing things which has the lowest costs for them - but there are no actual blockers. There is always a path involving actual humans, and regular phone calls (or emails or paper forms).
Reactions tend to be wistful variations of "I wish I could" or "but how do you?" - and it's really always about the most trivial inconveniences.
To be honest, I never tried, but I see for example the removal of more and more procedures in person. In Spain where I'm from or Switzerland where I live it can be still manageable, but in the Nordic countries for example everything is digital and even cash is barely existent. A lot of payments are made by phone apps only.
I am from Nordic country. I did not use any cash, had no wallet for several years. It's not needed. After the US government acting like it does I mostly stopped using cards. Like with phone OSes a US-controlled duopoly.
Cash does not to need to be used anywere, but cards can be avoided for weeks until I need to use it again. Most can be handled by cash or bank transfer without problems.
For phones I have not any Google Android or iOS until a year ago. Nowdays I have a Google work phone, but it's always in flight mode except when a pay my lunch subsidized by employer. I type this comment on my Sailfish device and I use a degoogled Android. Can cause minor inconvenienance occasionally, but rarely enough to turn on my work phone.
> Cash does not to need to be used anywere, but cards can be avoided for weeks until I need to use it again.
Your experience sounds interesting but I can't infer what this sentence means.
Sorry, I should proof-read my comments... Can't edit it anymore
It is not necessary to use cash anywhere because cards can be used really everywhere.
But if you don't want to use cards, it's still possible to avoid it for weeks in row. You can pay cash at most brick and mortar places and by bank transfer at most online sites.
"oh, so sorry, we do not have change". (The note was £20, not 100, not even 50.) Good luck ...
I walked into my bank the other day and sorted out something, without an appointment.
Just joined an informal queue (no digital queueing system! The humans used their eyes and brain to remember who next )
Handed over my physical debit card so they could locate my account.
What digital hellscape do you live in? UK here
Not my experience. I'm in the USA, and there are still bank branches everywhere, I'd say as many as ever and new ones are being built. In fact within a mile of my house the finishing touches on the latest new one (full remodel of a former restaurant building) are just about done.
> I'd say as many as ever and new ones are being built.
That's an amazing difference compared to the UK. My local town had 5 bank branches ten years ago, now there are none. Until 2 weeks ago we didn't even have a cash machine; fortunately there is one now. It is something that has rapidly changed in the last 15 years.
You should be able to do all that from a computer at home right? The times I needed to do serious banking on the go are limited. Yes convenient, but replaceable with a 10 minute session at home using my Firefox or similar on Linux.
Why does this permeate the HN all the time. You can 100% function without a fucking smartphone. My Dad doesn’t have one, he has zero-to-no trouble going to the bank and paying his bills and just about every other imaginable thing. If there was something he could not do and there were repercussions for it he’d be calling an attorney to rectify the situation. It is crazy to keep reading this over and over on HN, so weird
> "Why does this permeate the HN all the time."
It's a bias, an in-bubble illiteracy effect, concerning the perception and analysis of realities (e. g. experiences) outside that bubble, mirroring an in-group's projections about an out-group. It is, in my decades of experience, a very common phenomenon in the IT sector.
> "My Dad doesn’t have one, he has zero-to-no trouble going to the bank and paying his bills and just about every other imaginable thing."
So far, that holds true for me as well (Germany).
> "If there was something he could not do and there were repercussions for it he’d be calling an attorney to rectify the situation."
The crux: the increasing friction brought on by rising technological entry barriers. In Germany you have at least the non-exclusion principle of Teilhabe (lit.: participation) which gives certain guarantees. But such achievements of democracy are continually under fire.
> It's a bias, an in-bubble illiteracy effect, concerning the perception and analysis of realities (e. g. experiences) outside that bubble, mirroring an in-group's projections about an out-group. It is, in my decades of experience, a very common phenomenon in the IT sector.
I (also German) have the impression that people who work in the IT sector are often much more critical of surveillance methods (including smartphones) than the average citizen.
Well, no surprise that it works in Germany, but I am not so sure it will in the Nordic countries for example.
And hopefully it stays that way in Germany. A state and its essential-to-life institutions and businesses (which includes cultural participation) need to be accessible to everyone. That includes people who don't own a smartphone, for whatever reason.
It is vital that government services must not depend on anything that is not government provided.
No government service can depend on having a product from a private corporation.
Nordic, works just fine, i only have an HMD 'Nokia' non-smartphone (i detest capacitive touchscreens, and my previous ungoogled qwerty android phone broke, waiting for my next one to arrive in 2026-12 or thereabouts).
No QR-code-only restaurants that i have seen, and i would walk out without a word if that happened (even if i had a device that can do that). Bank does 2FAs second part with an SMS, first part is username, password and an otp code from a paper. Bank login is also a very common way of logging into governmental systems, but those only use the username, password and otp code, skipping the SMS, alternatively i could use an id card with a reader, state provides even Linux software for that.
The housing companys winter car engine heating sockets operate with an app, or alternatively just opening the lid and setting the timer yourself.
Additional data point: my dad, when he was still alive (-2025), had a smartphone but wouldn't use apps beyond facebook, did his banking by mailing in signed bills or at the bank in person, without an appointment.
Technically, sure you probably can spend a large amount of time, energy, and money to find alternative non-smartphone ways of navigating through modern life.
Practically, you need a smartphone. Engaging an attorney != practical
That's the thing. The larger amount of time, energy, and money we spent on doing banking in the 1990s was real. The web, and then mobile apps, made a lot of that more convenient. But it's not impossible to live the old way. You can still write paper checks, go to the bank to make a deposit and get cash, etc. It used to be normal, everyone did it, now it seems extremely inconvenient for most people.
"You can still write paper checks" – greetings to our US brethren! :-) In EU you will meet a girl at the counter who can operate only bank "tap on" terminal and have no idea how to print anything or where the website is. Why? She doesn't care. She is paid same money if she does or doesn't. Wnant to complain? Here is the feedback form (QR code) ... Manager? She is ...
It is extremely inconvenient.
Both because a dwindling minority of people do old things the old way; and because new things (eg Netflix and Uber) are designed for the new way, even if they don't absolutely require it.
> The larger amount of time, energy, and money we spent on doing banking in the 1990s was real. The web, and then mobile apps, made a lot of that more convenient.
I wouldn't say so: when I go to the bank, I often combine it with grocery shopping, which I have to do anyway. So doing banking the old way is hardly an inconvenience.
In Portugal you have to do that at the bank terminals, otherwise going to the counter implies paying a services tax, depending on the kind of customer one happens to be.
Yeah, and lot of people assume that something doesn't exist because they aren't personally aware of it. Quite often there are people who are willing to serve those who don't make mainstream choices. Other times, it means that you simply have a different lifestyle from the mainstream. There's nothing wrong with that.
It's crazy that you're so insulated inside your own bubble and close-minded not to realize that the degree to which smartphones are required in daily life differ massively across countries, and HN is a global place. The places where your dad would have trouble going to the bank and doing "every other imaginable thing" are real and exist. You're just not in one.
> the degree to which smartphones are required in daily life differ massively across countries, and HN is a global place.
In some countries people are willing to fight much harder against being coerced to have to use a smartphone. The message should thus rather be: follow their example.
It's easier to fight for additional rights when you start at a reasonably high baseline.
Yep, many older people right now don’t have a smart phone and never will.
As long as some younger people stay that course we should be fine. Hopefully we’ll see an increase of dumb phone adoption in a growing cohort younger adults. But the FUD spread in threads like this actually spreads misinformation and makes that less likely to happen
And those older people frequently have to ask someone in their life who has a smartphone to assist them. They still need a smartphone to manage modern life they just don’t happen to own the phone they need.
Because the real complaint isn’t “it's impossible to live without a smartphone”, it is “I want all of the conveniences of a smartphone without having one, and I want every business to cater to the small minority who don’t want to use a smartphone”.
It’s like complaining that it’s difficult to travel to another continent if you don’t want to fly. I want to go from LA to Paris in 12 hours without getting on a plane!
I dont have a personal smartphone (I do have a pile of them in my office for testing software I make) but I dont use one myself. Its fine, I can do my banking and whatever. I live in Ireland.
Inconvenient? My life is super convenient. No stress, deep thinking and deep work, super focus and concentration.
What I would find inconvenient is to be like the smartphone zombies around me, adicted to their phones, restlessly doomscrolling with dead eyes, feeling empty inside.
Print some stuff from time to time or arguing my way through tickets offices is a small price to pay for not being enslaved to the IT-machine.
>you can no longer exist in society without a phone.
I do just fine without.
But certainly there are additional challenges. In my city, for example, there has been a massive shift towards phone-pay parking... which excludes my paying for it — still waiting for my citation (to challenge in court).
Carrying my pager with me is the only reason people will pretend-believe I'm actually phoneless. Many have never seen beeper technology, its one-way advancedness.
> Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone.
millions of people would like a word…
> Most things will work but it takes one critical service that doesn't have a viable workaround, and you're forced to buy (and possibly carry) a "mainstream" phone just for that.
Absolutely not, if there is “critical service” that requires an iPhone or Android you call an attorney.
> Banking, government, authentication, postal service and public transit apps are just some of the common categories that will, in the end, force you to use one of those systems, unless governments mandate viable alternatives.
There are now and there always will be alternatives
> As an individual, it feels like my options are to either submit or try to live a hermit's life, bringing endless suffering and exclusion to myself.
As an individual you can and should fight any system that forces you into buying a smartphone. Alternatives must exist even if they might be “incovenient” (e.g. have to do it browser vs. via some “App”)
> can and should fight
I disagree, because the impact on my quality of life from fighting the fight is just not a level of sacrifice that is sensible.
> There are now and there always will be alternatives
The problem is that those "alternatives" often come with serious downsides, from higher cost, to massive inconvenience, to having to work around simply not having a service. And while most of the time it's possible to work around it, most people quickly hit the limit where the cost isn't bearable.
> I disagree, because the impact on my quality of life from fighting the fight is just not a level of sacrifice that is sensible
Interesting. I feel then that if this is the case we cannot complain then, no? If the fight is not worth fighting (I think that it is) than complaints about it are pointless (for the lack of a softer word…)
You're essentially blaming the robbery victim for handing over their wallet rather than fighting the knife-wielding robber.
Browser is great until it tells you that you need to use a mobile device.
This happens all the time on multiple KYC platforms in the US.
My laptop is an equally mobile device, they just don't recognize that.
you have an example where you are forced to use a mobile device? genuinely interested cause while I have a smartphone I don’t have hardly any “apps” on it (on my iphone all the “apps” are on the first “page” (without grouping). I do not like the idea of losing a phone and potentially someone getting access to my entire digital life (my phone password is 6 zeros) and I genuinely do not use phone for anything important
HMRC in the UK / multiple Government Portals. Have you been to India (Air tickets)? Or China (Wechat/Alipay QR codes or you go hungry)? And see my example above regarding US woman at Hilton in Rome.
My employer's background check app required it. Multiple financial institutions' KYC required it.
So far, I have only found this with T-Mobile's app.
The good news is that I can go into the nearby T-Mobile store and have them deal with it.
I would immediately change my mobile service provider, this is an easy one and choices are plenty. financially as well, you can save yourself a lot of money if you have a cadence for switching providers
Maybe.
I have 7 lines with unlimited data for under $150.
It’s always been the case. In previous eras people were “forced” to use mastercard / visa, Windows, AT&T, Western Union, East India Company, Templar bnking, etc.
I am not remotely defending the situation, past or present, just saying it’s a recurring theme.
> Nowadays, you can no longer exist in society without a phone
Hyperbole much.
I’m a 44 year old software engin, I don’t have a phone. Have never had a smart phone, haven’t had a dumb phone since 2015.
Some things are annoying, for example, I have to keep pushing my bank to let me use email not SMS. Going somewhere new I’ll look online on my laptop and jot down a few directions on paper.
That’s about it.
I snowboard and hike and hunt and camp and fish, no coverage doing all those anyway, so much of my life when not in a house with a laptop I simply don’t need or want one.
I'd wager the majority of people on this site could afford $100-$200 for a separate phone that's solely used for apps that mandate Google/Apple services. As a bonus, using the "mainstream" phone with only those apps increases security, compared to having your banking apps on the same phone as other random apps.
"As an individual, it feels like my options are to either submit or try to live a hermit's life, bringing endless suffering and exclusion to myself."
Classic "all-or-nothing", "black and white" HN comment
No middle ground. Two extremes and nothing in between
In the real world, few people think this way
Not only that, but it's common today to have more than one computer
There is no shortage of HN comments that keep claiming "banking apps" as an argument against any alternatives to using a single phone running a corporate mobile OS _for everything they do with a computer_, not just banking. Feels like a meme
These people must do a lot of banking on the go in places where laptops, for instance, cannot travel. If so, one wonders why not just have a phone dedicated to mobile banking
This probably depends on location, but generally, you cannot log in to your bank account on your laptop/computer without using your phone's banking app for 2FA. That's the status quo among banks.
Whether it may be possible to convince a bank to give you a hardware token instead if they even still make them is not an assured thing.
> you cannot log in to your bank account on your laptop/computer without using your phone's banking app
Where is this?
I have lots of bank accounts, probably more than most people. Three local credit unions, Fidelity, Schwab, Chase, BofA, Citibank, Barclays, two local area banks, and two international banks. Plus a few lesser known ones for 401k/IRA accounts.
I have never installed any bank phone app. I do all my bank interactions from my desktop via Firefox.
MFA is a requirement of the revised Payment Services Directive (PSD2) in the EU and many banks use their apps for authorising online card payments. Its also common to use apps as 2FA for logging in to online banking or making bank transfers.
There can be alternatives in some cases (some banks offer code generating card readers, for example) but for personal accounts in particular, it would probably be difficult to operate without banking apps.
This must vary a lot by location.
In Singapore, the largest local bank, and three large overseas banks (Citibank, HSBC and Standard Chartered) all require my to be near my phone to login. However, I haven't tried just saying I don't have a phone from the beginning. I know they used to have physical security tokens, perhaps they still would have provided one if I had insisted.
In New Zealand, I've only come across one bank that requires you to provide authentication from your phone (Rabobank), and in Australia I have less experience, but it's not universal either.
galvin@ is right. I +1'd that. Regarding banks ... try HSBC. (I know, "I can always use another bank". Thanks. I happen to be Premier only at HSBC ...)
I have several accounts in different banks (across two different countries) and never had problems with using SMS as a second factor for internet banking. Definitely not status quo, at least in Europe.
I'm in Europe and my bank (and most other banks in the country) only still allow existing TAN authenticators until they break or run out of battery, but only support 2FA with their app going forward.
Interesting that you mention Europe, because if I remember correctly, at least in Germany, all banks that I'm aware of dropped SMS support when PSD2 was introduced.
The are people who dislike using Apple and Google smartphones
HN replies often try to reframe this problem from
(a) "How do I avoid using an Apple or Google smartphone" for whatever reason^[FN1]
to
(b) "Banking apps do not work on non-Apple, non-Google" smartphones
or
(c) Apple and Google smartphones need to become likeable, e.g., by pleading with the companies, petitioning the government for regulation, etc.
FN1. I have not seen any HN comments that suggest anyone is concerned about _using a banking app_ on an Apple or Google smartphone. What I have seen are comments that suggest Apple and Google smartphones are unsatisfactory for _other reasons_, such as being "locked down", "not an open platform", "privacy" risks, "security" flaws, etc. The non-banking uses of these smartphones are what cause concern
The problem (a) can be solved by choosing a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone, `i.e., a smartphone running a non-Apple, non-Google OS, or, better yet, by choosing a different form factor running a non-Apple, non-Google OS, _for non-banking uses_
There are some commenters who obviously have no intention of avoiding Apple and Google smarthones _where possible_. They will keep using these smartphones for _everything_, not just online banking
On that "lot of banking on the go" ... here is the story. I witnessed nice and very well mannered US woman at Hilton in Rome. She was red and her hands were trembling. She tried all her 5 US-issued CCs – none worked. I felt bad for her, so we sat on the sofa. We installed one of the online FinApps (W...e) on her phone. She used her bank's app to transfer money to W...e account. Generated online Mastercard. Added to apple wallet. Beeep. Room paid. Good luck without those apps and mobile phone.
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How about a second phone for the things you list?
Bingo.. we will all need to pick which prison we walk ourselves in to: Google or Apple
This article fails to mention GrapheneOS.
The article starts with Murena, Punkt, Volla which are all based on Android. If you do this, then imho you must mention GrapheneOS, the by far better option (updates, privacy, security, organisation).
Google Pixel with GrapheneOS is the best non-Google phone... ;-)
It's incredibly funny, because a lot of these companies behave the same as the duopoly that people try to get away from. Murena's CEO repeatedly stated that security hardening is only needed for secret agents and criminals (explicitly calling out child porn), pushing the same narratives as the people pushing chat control, age verification, etc.
Volla and Murena are pushing Unified Attestation, a similar system to Google Play Strong Integrity, that they can use to block competition.
Besides that, both Murena and Volla have abysmal security and Volla is mostly in the business of German-washing Chinese smartphones. E.g. their Volla Phone Quintus is a smartphone designed by an Emirates company, largely produced in China, that can be had for 150 Euro new on the ebay.ae .
> This article fails to mention GrapheneOS.
No, it does not. I wrote the article.
The article is not about phone OSes. The article is about companies that will sell you a NEW non-Google non-Apple smartphone.
The article is not about hardware, or phones.
The article is about PHONE VENDORS.
Also, go read the actual article and read the final paragraph, then act on it.
GrapheneOS doesn't fit the criteria of the list.
https://grapheneos.org/faq#preinstalled-devices
You can buy phones with Graphene preinstalled: https://shop.nitrokey.com/shop , https://zextons.co.uk/categories/DeGoogled-Phones , if you really want.
I wrote the article. I think you did not read it. Read the last paragraph in particular. Not the bootnote, in the main text.
As much as I like graphene it is literary running on google hardware (atm) and uses asop. Even if it is a really good option is you want to run degoogled and secure android.
You don't need any Google stuff on it. Isolated Play Services is an option, so is Play Store. It's not installed ootb. I don't get why you'd prefer to run less secure options on hardware that isn't on par with Pixels or iPhones and expect to get a secure OS.
Murena (/e/ os), Punkt, Volla use aosp
I mean.... Android is aosp. And if you want to run degoogled GrapheneOS you just don't install Google services. Out of the box it does NOT contain any - but /e/OS ships with the privileged microG, which means that Android Auto or Google Play Store have privileged access to the phone.
So I'm not sure how can you suggest GOS is less "degoogled" while not shipping anything but allowing to install sandboxed / constrained play services, while comparing it to /e/OS which ships with a privileged plug.
Also, if you want to run a secure android, that's not /e/OS either.
That privileged plug in /e/os makes push notifications work, and you can enable just those and leave Android Auto, G Play Store and whatnot disabled. Not much privacy risk - I think?
On the other hand, while GOS is running Google services sandboxed, they are still running and have access to internet. If you try enabling them only when you need push notifications, they will break - notifications stop coming.
Neither system is optimal - can we please get microG sandboxed on GOS, pretty please?
Ehm, microG on /e/OS is talking to Google all the time. They also use proprietary Google blobs for passing basic Play Integrity. /e/OS also gives a bunch of Google apps (including Google Maps and Android Auto) privileged access (you can find the signing key fingerprints in the source code of the /e/OS microG fork).
No Google Maps or Android Auto on my phones, so I don't care much about privileged access - they have none anyway.
No, microG is definitely not talking to Google all the time, NetGuard would warn me if it did. I would assume it is not even running when I disable it (which is easily done, as opposed to stopping Google Services in GrapheneOS) - but to be fair I didn't actually validate that.
I kind of like GrapheneOS otherwise, this is by far my biggest gripe. I can even survive the icons. But avoiding Google (and other big tech) is the reason I am not on a cheaper and more convenient phone with regular Android, so if GrapheneOS refuses to support an alternative to Google Play Services, I'm not too happy about it. If there are real problems with microG then I'm sure the authors would be interested in a better solution too.
>No Google Maps or Android Auto on my phones, so I don't care much about privileged access - they have none anyway.
You don't seem to understand how play service / MicroG work. Maps or Auto Apps aren't the ones having the privilaged access but Play Service and MicroG.
>NetGuard would warn me if it did. I would assume it is not even running when I disable it
Since play services/microg have higher privileges than NetGuard they could just bypass it.
>But avoiding Google (and other big tech) is the reason I am not on a cheaper and more convenient phone with regular Android, so if GrapheneOS refuses to support an alternative to Google Play Services, I'm not too happy about it. If there are real problems with microG then I'm sure the authors would be interested in a better solution too.
That doesn't make any sense at all. GrapheneOS by default has _0_ Google connections unlike LineageOS, /E/ or any other AOSP fork. MicroG is not an alternative to not using play services at all = actually avoiding Google, but a open source reimplementation that still has all the privacy and security issues of regular play services. GrapheneOS sandboxes Google play services only have the privacy issues since just like with MicroG you still connect to Google = not actually avoiding Google.
The issue with no notification without play services can be easily fixed by not using privacy hostile apps which only work with them.
I’m waiting to see what they come up with for the Motorola partnership. Hopefully it’s interesting.
GrapheneOS requires a Google Pixel (currently) though. That's why they omitted it I imagine
[flagged]
You might want to re-read the headline.
Please try a bit harder to respond within the context
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GrapheneOS is a Google OS - it's a slightly modified Android developed by Google and continues to be dependent on Google for updates.
(Murena /e/OS is similar. No, slamming the downvote button won't make either of them any less Google dependant OSes.)
you are being downvoted because the article considers de-googled versions of android acceptable. and neither are dependent on google in the sense that even if google stopped publishing android source altogether they could continue to develop the versions they already have. that's the whole point of Free Software and Open Source.
Yeah, and that's utter nonsense. Noone is really stepping up to develop Android beyond repackaging it.
If Google decides to remove a feature, GrapheneOS and other forks will end up without it too. If they stop publishing security patches, the forks end up insecure too.
It's just like all the Chrome "forks" when ManifestV2 died. None of them survived for more than a few versions until maintainers lost interest.
Calling any of these Google free is downright lying.
ok, that's probably not the popular opinion, but a reasonable argument.
i think though that the chrome manifestV2 support example is not really applicable to your argument though. chrome still exists, and the removal of a feature is not the same thing as stopping to release sources altogether. if google had stopped releasing chrome sources then some chrome forks with v2 support would still exist. same i believe would be true if google stopped android releases.
same goes for security patches. a lot of effort in forks now is put in keeping up with android (and chrome) releases. if those releases stop then the effort would be able to shift towards security patches. would it be better or worse? hard to say. depends on the resources the forks would manage to gather to do the work.
Isn't Brave still shipping it?
No, you can't install any 3rd party ManifestV2 extensions in Brave. Neither are they shipping any changes to the browser engine that Google doesn't maintain.
E.g. they tried to implement dark mode website conversion and decided it's too hard to do anything that Google themselves don't do.
Thanks!
yes, but only for those extensions that the brave team maintains because all other v2 extensions are likely no longer maintained at all: https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/
so in general the problem is not with supporting v2, the problem is that except for a few special extensions that need v2 features there is no point because all those v2 extensions out there will either be ported to v3 or they will be unmaintained.
the maintainers of chrome forks with v2 support lost interest because the developers of v2 extensions stopped maintaining them.
Thanks, I wasn't aware of that detail.
> This article fails to mention GrapheneOS.
From Wikipedia: "GrapheneOS[b] (/ˈɡræfiːn.oʊˈɛs/) is a free and open-source, privacy- and security-focused, Android-based operating system"
So still Android.
Sounds very much like HarmonyOS. I was just in a Huawei Store and I think from a UI/UX perspective, despite being quite new, it's incredibly slick and leaps ahead in great design and integration within the HarmonyOS ecosystem. Even saw it being used as Laptop OS and Mobile, the convergence is quite applaudable.
The kindest was that the store's staff advised against buying the device as it's quite painful to use it with Google's apk & blobs, because it drains more battery than when it's integrated with your system services directly. I told him, that maybe rare, but I'm actually happy to not use Google apps as much as possible and especially not within my operating system. Another point he made was that 5G'A is blocked by Google, about that I know nothing to be honest.
Some Android forks are indeed quite nice, but the issue has always been the updating model, upstream maintenance and compatibility. With Harmony OS a large cooperation with the consumers in focus and the one developing the entire hardware stack is behind the OS development and maintenance making it safer against supply-chain hacks and a deeper integration possible than any other OS.
The next version of it, HarmonyOS NEXT is microkernel based, and they have two new languages of their own.
ArkTS, inspired in Typescript and similar nodejs runtime.
Naturally due to performance problems, they decided to come up with another one, also Typescript inspired, but ahead of time compiled, GC and effects.
It is called Canjgie.
This naturally is a big effort rebooting the whole ecosystem, it only works because Huawei could focus on the Chinese market after losing Android.
Ok, but that HarmonyOS NEXT is closed source and Huawei devices don't allow system modifications, right?
There's "OpenHarmony", but the question is whether we can practically run it on Huawei devices..
Most likely, but that wasn't the point I was answering to.
Open Harmony apparently is Huawei trying their own version of something like AOSP.
Most of the documents seem to only exist in chinese.
If you're gonna leave the big two, why would you go for a closed source system where they can (and do) commit the same crime against user freedom?
My daily driver is a HarmonyOS NEXT device these days.
I had to find a bunch of workarounds to have payments working (I ended vibe-coding my payments app in ArkTS, don't ask) and messaging apps, and well, I use it with almost 0 compromises on a daily basis. It feels like a breeze of fresh air to know there are other devices and platforms out there that, even if seen as the bad guys here in the western world, can be used as a way to escape the established monopolies.
Maybe I should go for Graphene as a safer option to free myself from GMS and Google/Apple in general, but that would require me buying a Pixel device from Google... which I don't like to be honest.
I use a Librem5 Linux phone. With the default PureOS operating system.
Enjoy your freedom, break free from Google and Apple.
Have a full Linux computer in your pocket that you can also use for calling.
See also the discussion on this post: https://mastodon.social/@janvlug/116504044251287290
> Enjoy your freedom, break free from Google and Apple.
You can't escape it.
Your friends and employers and banks use it. The state will soon mandate it for ID. It's the accepted worldwide compute platform, and you're being the nail that sticks out.
Your usage is subject to breaking randomly, being unsupported, losing access or being banned by stepping outside the traffic lines, etc.
They'll use attestation, certs and signing, proprietary APIs, and the scale and might of trillions of dollars to force this.
The only way to "break free" and "enjoy your freedom" is via regulation and -- the better option -- trust busting.
The EU and ASEAN are the best bets for regulation. Getting another Lina Khan that works faster next time is the next best bet for regulation, and possibly a superior outcome that could result in a breakup opening up mobile for true competition.
Being weird in the 0.0001% will not last, nor does it help anyone else escape this monopolistic tyranny.
We need the government to pave the way for dozens of Apple/Google competitors. Or to horizontally split these two companies into dozens of "Baby Bells" that are forced to fight one another.
If a phone can make calls, send texts, read emails, and take pictures it already covers 98% of my use cases.
Enjoy being the lucky minority while it lasts.
Bad analogy, but it will rhyme:
If a country can provide housing, roads, fire departments, public transit, etc. that might cover 98% of most people's use cases.
But perhaps that country is also fighting wars, committing genocide, perpetrating mass surveillance, propping up an oligarchy, manipulating currency, practicing authoritarianism, etc. ?
There might be points that need to be made and changes that need to be implemented, even if the average citizen or user doesn't directly see the impact or feel immediate exposure.
One of the reasons this is hard is that the general public doesn't understand the greater second and third order effects. And even if they do, they are typically inarticulate at expressing how this is dysregulated and dysfunctional to the broader economy and capitalism.
Luckily, there are plenty of very wealthy people that are disenfranchised by this that will loudly take up arms. Domestic competitors, business leaders, other impacted industries, etc. That's how and why this will change.
Tim Sweeney isn't the only one interested in this.
If you never hang out with friends and pay them via a QR code, sure.
I suppose that's region dependent. I have never used (or seen someone use) a QR code to pay.
I know I live in Oregon or whatever but a lot of people use cash.
"I live in a place that hasn't seen progress and still uses physical cash." Isn't really useful to those of us who live in places that don't even use cash. Also, I don't really want to go back to using physical cash thanks.
Progress, as in, you've gained the privilege of third parties tracking every payment and every bill you've split with friends, sure.
Let's be realistic; payment services are convenient, but not advantageous in every single way.
I don’t have an issue with my bank tracking my purchases. In fact I like it. Not everyone wants to live in a constant state of looking over your shoulder. If we’ve reached that point the problem is not the banks, but the other parties. Going back to old technology is not a solution I want. Regulating the problem areas would be better.
Fully agree, I like not having to deal with cache. Fully digital payments and contactless payment are so much nicer than cash (in my opinion). I just want to be able to do contactless payments on my GrapheneOS phone and not get locked out of it because Google decided it's a good way of forcing out competition.
Hasn’t seen progress? Portland has a fantastic transit system and all the amenities you could want from a modern city. Yet cash is common, a few of the best places are even cash only.
I’ve found more places going cashless in Portland than are cash only. The one cash only place I regularly visited for decades finally gave in and started accepting cards.
That is strange, because Oregon has required cash to be allowed as a form of payment statewide since 2022 (SB 1565). There are a few exceptions but most public facing businesses are covered. Maybe they will do cash if asked but they don’t make it obvious?
I thought y’all just bartered with rhododendrons and cutthroat
Chinook salmon actually
Banking basically has to be done via phone now.
Maybe I am lucky in the USA, but every bank I’ve ever done business with can be accessed through a PC and web browser. If any of my banks should decide to remove that option, I just move over to one of the other thousands of banks in the USA.
That or you can simply go in to a branch office.
I keep seeing this, but I've never signed into a single one of my banks, mortgage companies, stock brokers, or credit card companies on my phone. The phone might be used to get a code for 2FA via text, but that's the extent of it. Everything is done on my PC through a dedicated browser specifically for financial purposes. This applies to Chase, Fidelity, Schwab, Wells Fargo, Marcus, Morgan Stanley, Amex, and more. So theoretically there's no reason a Linux OS on a phone can't do any of these things without Google or Apple by simply masquerading as a PC.
I think the disconnect comes from the European vs the US perspective. In Europe, banks in many countries require smartphone apps for 2FA (unless you still have one of the old authenticators that you can hold on until the battery dies). One of the reasons is that PSD2 requires two-factor authentication:
https://www.betaalvereniging.nl/en/knowledge-base/digital-id...
My guess is that given that banks are liable in many cases of account compromise where the user did not do anything wrong, they generally don't use SMS or e-mail auth because it is relatively easy to compromise (e.g. no or bad encryption, downgrade attacks, etc). Also, doing 2FA through a smartphone app is much cheaper for them than keeping a fleet of authenticators running.
Luckily, it looks like PSD3 is going to require access without a smartphone too:
Require payment services providers to ensure that all users can benefit from methods to perform SCA which are adapted to their needs and situations and, in particular, that those methods do not depend on one single technology, device or mechanism, for instance on the possession of a smartphone.
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/el/qanda_...
So things are looking up in that respect.
TIL about PSD3. Thank you.
Find a better bank I guess. I’ve never used my phone for banking of any kind ever.
I am in Spain. It's universal to use mobile device for almost all banking this is common in Europe.
The only time I go into a bank is to deposit cash, and that is very rare.
I have no idea why people think in-person banking is superior, it is a pain in the arse.
That said, my bank predates all the fintechs by decades and was phone-first before smartphones.
Sadly, that's not a great answer where most banks are going towards the same direction. It's also convenient to use a phone for banking.
I use a smartphone less than most people. Things I already could not do without a Google or Apple phone:
Use some banking apps. In fact I cannot use one banking app I otherwise would because it will only work if you have no non-store apps installed at all.
A regulatory requirement to prove my ID without using the mobile app would be a 20 min+ each way drive (plus walking, time doing it etc.) to another town.
> The EU and ASEAN are the best bets for regulation.
Did you read the recent HN stories about the EU's age verification app that will only work on attested phones? Lots of other governments (EU and non-EU) doping similar things.
> We need the government to pave the way for dozens of Apple/Google competitors. Or to horizontally split these two companies into dozens of "Baby Bells" that are forced to fight one another.
I have very little confidence that is likely. Politically governments are far more pro-big business and anti-competition than they have been in a long time.
> Being weird in the 0.0001% will not last, nor does it help anyone else escape this monopolistic tyranny.
Every single person who does not go along, is a a political and commercial argument not to remove alternatives. If I use a website and an app to bank or buy something, it pushes up the stats for the web app vs the mobile app.
> EU's age verification app that will only work on attested phones?
This is not a single unified front. Multiple battles are ongoing simultaneously.
There are strong proponents of anti-monopoly and digital sovereignty in government, just as there are those that want to push for a surveillance state.
Here are some recent and non-insignificant things that the EU and UK have required Google and Apple do:
- Support "side loaded" apps (as Google works to remove the ability)
- Standardize on USB-C
- Force alternative payments platforms
- Force Apple to stop requiring WebKit and WebKit runtimes
They're just getting started!
> I have very little confidence that is likely.
I have a great deal of confidence that the world is ready for this. Every non-US nation wants to break the stranglehold US tech has on their countries. The EU, UK, and ASEAN have a tremendous amount of power here.
We also have a huge reservoir of political support for breaking up tech monopolies inside the US. Lots of high profile politicians are ready to go to work on this, on both sides of the aisle.
Moreover, you have every single other company on the planet that wants this duopoly fractured. Entire industries that salivate over this.
It's just a matter of time and making sure we make these points articulate and loudly heard.
This is far more effective than trying to hack your device and proclaim "year of linux on android 2030". That doesn't work. It's a miserable experience and doesn't help a single other person.
> This is far more effective than trying to hack your device and proclaim "year of linux on android 2030". That doesn't work.
It doesn't work for you. There are lots of people in this thread dailying a Linux device, it's a perfectly valid choice if you're not conjoined at the hip with mobile apps. Your assertion that it helps nobody is obviously dishonest projection.
Now, PostmarketOS won't rescue the billions of apathetic people on the planet, but why should it? Those people will sabotage themselves over and over again for the sake of convenience. Even banning iPhones/Android in your country won't fix the issue, we saw that in China. Your only solution is to advocate for yourself, you can't rely on the greater hacker consciousness to instinctively protect your user experience.
>Your friends and employers and banks use it. The state will soon mandate it for ID.
You just buy a separate, cheap Android/Google phone for all these things. Emphasis on buying the cheapest one possible, so Google and Apple aren't making much money off you.
Yup. I have not tried using a non-GoogleAndroid or iOS smartphone, but what you describe perfectly reflects what I experienced when I went started to work for a large employer 16 y ago. I had been using Linux as my main OS on desktops and mobile computers for at least 15 y by then. Slowly the grind of hacking my system to access the VPN, check email on their Exchange server, open MS Word docs.. it all pushed me to MacOS from about 2015 - 2021. Eventually I could not abide by Apple's incompatible hold on my data, Gatekeeper (I really hate the concept that they must approve software I want to run on my own hardware) and the unrepairability of their machines.. so I am now on Win 11. Right now, considering the trade offs, I think this is the best choice. I see a lot of people extolling Linux lately, so maybe it is time to try going back.
Back OT, smartphones were always less open than the general purpose computers of yore. And it looks like they are increasingly a requirement for participating in many societies. In general I don't find this a good thing, but have little faith that regulators will 'solve' is because they have their own pitfalls (recent examples from EU: age verification and chat control).
Great comment
>We need the government to
Since they'll never, any marketers scrolling by: this is your time to scheme your way into the Linux phone promotion/sales game.
Jolla still exists:
https://jolla.com/
They develop Sailfish, a non-Google Linux-based mobile OS that can apparently run Android apps decently in a sandbox.
They are also less than 2 months away from the first deliveries of the Jolla Phone 2026, a new SailfishOS device they have designed and built from scratch. Over the past years the official Sailfish experience has largely been relying on Sony Open Device program - a co-operation which hasn't always been very smooth for the customers.
I have been daily driving SFOS on a Sony Xperia 10 III for the past 3 years and it works well for me. I think the 10 III is the current "peak Sailfish" at least among the officially supported devices but this should change once the new phones roll out in early July. For new orders of the 2026 phone they are currently aiming for delivery in September in the supported markets (EU, UK, Norway and Switzerland).
I have rage-quit apple for a C2 and the muscle memory still kicks in after months. The ergonomy of Sailfish is sometimes bizarre, the little top left dot for navigation for example. Still it does everything I need, just with a very bad camera. Let's hope the 2026 will fix that.
Oh but you don't usually need to care for the dot itself so much as it's just an indicator that you can do a middle swipe left/right to move between stacked pages.
Ah yes, that explains it all! I'm still learning how to unlearn.
I've been on Apple for a couple of years after a decade on Android and I still haven't internalized all of iOS's inconsistencies. But admittedly I don't do much on my phone besides SMS, calendar, and maps, so using other apps is always a bit of initial relearning.
Hey, that's my article. Thanks for sharing it!
Here is some good practical info on the pros and cons of different de-Googled phone OSes:
https://blog.gridranger.dev/mobile-oses-featuring-fairphone-...
The majority of these phones are running a modified version of Android. I wouldn’t call that non-Google. There is a total lack of diversity in the phone market. I’ve been trying to find a minimal feature phone for my kids and looked at Nokia, but non-Android Nokia phones don’t support enough US cellular bands.
Many years later and I'm still bitter that the tech press laughed Windows Phone out of the room straight to its demise. Yes it had very little developer support but at some point things were looking up. It was just the butt of too many jokes from influential people.
A third ecosystem right now would have been amazing
The Windows phone didn't make it due to Microsoft failing to compete, not the press.
Not many tech products exite me less than the concept of a Microsoft Windows 365 Copilot Cortana phone.
> The Windows phone didn't make it due to Microsoft failing to compete
As I recall Microsoft threw quite a lot of resources into Windows Phone.
My then-employer had apps for Android and Apple, and Microsoft literally paid for us to port it to Windows Phone. Microsoft brought Nokia, who had dominated the industry in the late 1990s and early 2000s.
And Microsoft was early to the mobile party too - you could get an iPaq H3660 running Microsoft Pocket PC 2000, seven years before the first iPhone. Keyboardless Fujitsu and Compaq tablets ran Windows XP Tablet PC Edition in 2003, seven years before the iPad.
They weren't as good as what came later. Chunky, fragile devices, resistive touchscreens, stylus input with a tiny on-screen keyboard, worse batteries, worse wifi, barely any mobile data. And at the time, $500 seemed hugely expensive compared to a normal phone, even if these days there are plenty of $1000 smartphones.
But there's an alternate reality where Microsoft had a 'first mover advantage' and captured a big slice of the smartphone-and-tablet market.
It was Microsofts fault. I had a Windows Phone just to play with it (besides an iPhone), Nokia Lumia. Just when Windows Phone 7 was getting some traction, Microsoft axed it and rebooted the ecosystem. None of the popular phones that ran Windows Phone 7 got the Windows Phone 8 update. To make it worse, Windows Phone 8 apps were not compatible with Windows Phone 7.
So Microsoft basically said: "as a thanks for being an early adopter, you know have to buy a completely new phone again". For reference, Windows Phone 7 was initially released in October 2010 and Windows Phone 8 in October 2012. After that many (technically-inclined) early adopters left.
Microsoft destroyed Windows Phone.
Zune was also... not good. I was given one. It was defective. I think I got a warranty replacement and gave it to a friend who basically never used it as far as I know.
Nadella's Azure play basically saved Microsoft in my opinion. They totally blew mobile and desktop Windows and Office were declining markets and XBox was a sideshow.
I long for something like the first gen Zune that just worked. Great aesthetics and screen for the time. Replaced with an iPod Touch which was nice but entirely forgettable.
Windows phones were great at the time, everyone I knew who had a Lumia loved it, but yeah imagining what it would be like today makes me shudder.
Yes, and let's not forget Stephen Elop's 'Burning Platform' Memo
https://www.wsj.com/articles/BL-TEB-2031
Paywalled for me
https://sriramk.com/memos/elop-burning-platforms.pdf
Think I'll look for it myself thanks. Hackernews.pdf - that is a pass.
>> It was just the butt of too many jokes from influential people.
I loved my Windows phones (especially near the end when you were getting Pixel & Apple level hardware for pennies on the dollar), but is this really true? They had limited hardware partners (and the disaster with Nokia), lukewarm carrier deals, absolutely no apps, but who were these "influential people" who made fun of it? If anything it seemed more like no-one was even aware of it. I remember the little press they did get being quite positive on the devices & OS, while critical of the broader ecosystem, which seems fair.
Given what Microsoft has done with the state of Windows with built-in telemetry, the attempts to add Recall, and now AI features they are adding to many customers dismay, you have them doing anything different with Windows Phone if it had gained traction than Apple and Google?
> A third ecosystem right now would have been amazing
Initially read this ending on … amazon
Please Universe, don’t give us the Amazon Phone as alternative.
I imagine it'll be a while before Amazon wants to build another phone, after what a spectacular failure the Fire Phone was.
I'm guessing they'll try again at some point, though.
Why not Blackberry as the third ecosystem? They used QNX, a respected realtime OS, and had a history of making appealing, highly functional phones.
Lack of applications. They decided to fix that by adding an Android subsystem, and nobody wanted to publish their Android applications to the Amazon store even with Amazon throwing gobs of money at publishers and only some APIs having been moved into Google Play Services.
Sure, but the same applies to Windows mobile. Why favor Windows over Blackberry mobile devices for a 3rd ecosystem?
Intel fumbling smartphone's cpu felt like this too.
Eh, Microsoft got bored of developing their own browser and just pushes Chromium on their users now. Probably they would have just turned Windows Phones into another Android too.
The phone was terrible.
Every such post brings tears to my Nokia history filled eyes...
Things could have been so different.
... if it was not for Eternal September, yes :-) I miss those days. Good luck to you, stranger.
At this point, I am thinking about connecting a stock Android phone to a server and access it via scrcpy from my laptop whenever I need to interact with some stupid app bs that could've just been a website.
At least this way I can keep the majority of bloat away from primary communications device.
Or maybe just an android emulator? I wonder if this would actually work...
Most probably not due to device attestation.
Is anyone successfully running Android inside a container in Linux, for their daily apps?
This was the only way to run Bedrock Minecraft for a hot minute on my kids machines
What would a mobile OS look like if the browser became the operating system and apps were sandboxed WASM instead of native APKs?
I guess what would be the advantage? You move up another layer of software. Is it any different from the OS?
Maybe someone could revive FirefoxOS
News just in.
It happened in 2017.
https://www.kaiostech.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/KaiOS
2017 is also the year ChromeBooks first outsold Macs (by value, not units). 2017 was the Year of Linux on the Desktop, and the penguin taleban didn't even notice.
this is what we need
Palm webOS has entered the chat!
Still maintained, still sold.
https://www.lg.com/us/webos
Could be revived if anyone could be bothered.
I’m surprised that the Seeker is not even mentioned. I understand it’s Solana, it’s blockchain, whatever people think about it... to me it’s the only serious attempt at creating an app store that can compete with apple or google. What’s the point of independent hardware if the whole sw stack is them?
You mean https://solanamobile.com/seeker ?
All of the copy seems to be built around Solana, "Web3" and crypto. It doesn't seem to have any appeal outside of that. It's not clear what the software even is. The docs [0] seem to indicate it's just Android, with some SDKs for interacting with the "Web3" stuff.
This isn't a "serious attempt at creating an app store that can compete with apple or google", it's just another "Web3" project. It's exciting to people within that ecosystem and utterly uninteresting to anybody who isn't.
0: https://docs.solanamobile.com/get-started/development-setup
I really want to try one of these one day: https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/promoted/
But I haven't dared yet because I kind of expect it will not be able to replace my current phone.
Ubuntu Touch was amazing, way ahead of Android and iOS when it came out, the touch gestures were so much better than what was available.
But then it's just maintained by very few people nowadays and half abandoned.
You can buy a used Pixel 3a if you want to toy around with it, they cost nothing.
That's so sad. I even clicked around on their page to find out how I could contribute as a developer, but their gitlab repo seems abandoned since way before the latest release and all "how to get involved" articles eventually point to 404 pages.
You might have more luck searching "ubports".
https://ubports.com/
Personally I would recommend postmarketOS + plasma mobile instead, but I didn't think ubports/lomiri were dead yet.
The original site already leads there. That's where the dead links are for getting involved.
I've been the owner of a murena (fairphone + /e/OS) for many years. I've never had the opportunity to check its repairability, that darn thing hasn't broken yet.
I moved to a Fairphone 6 with /e/OS a few weeks ago. I can do everything I need to, everything I want to, and with more control over my digital footprint and what data is being collected about me. I've completely moved off Google services.
The OS experience is pretty impressive for not being made by an evil megacorp. The hardware is fairly midrange, but midrange today is last year's top end, and unless you're some expert photographer or needing phone VR or whatever, it's a great, normal smartphone experience.
I'm donating to the open source devs who make my apps, and they respond when I ask for useful features instead of always enshittifying it. For the corpo apps, it pulls from Google Play.
/e/ OS lied about the security and how "degoogled" the phone really is because it sends data to Google for MicroG
Only to the extent you use Micro-G, and Micro-G mitigates a large portion of the Google data harvesting. The built in App Lounge does not require a Google login to pull downloads from the Play Store, so it's possible to remain entirely anonymous to Google.
It's not, it starts sending all kinds of information to Google from the very first time you unlock the phone: https://www.kuketz-blog.de/e-datenschutzfreundlich-bedeutet-...
They also run proprietary Google blobs in a privileged process to pass basic Play Integrity and give certain Google apps higher privileges than the normal Android sandbox.
Aside from Google, Fairphone 6 (both the stock OS and /e/OS) ship with proprietary, Chinese TCL blobs for image processing (most likely also privileged).
Besides that, /e/OS often uses way outdated Linux kernel versions and firmware bundles with many known CVEs and old major Android versions, having many unfixed vulnerabilities that are not marked high/critical (ASBs only give you high/critical fixes).
Fairphone does not have a secure enclave, only TrustZone. So, secrets can be extracted using frequently-found side-channel accounts. The lack of a secure enclave + the many available CVEs, it will probably fail within seconds when using data extraction tools like Cellebrite, even when the phone is locked. So better not bring your phone to demonstrations or border crossings.
But hey, it doesn't matter, because Murena's CEO says security hardening is only for spies and pedophiles.
(Friends don't recommend friends Fairphone or /e/OS.)
A less drastic option is get an Android phone and put Lineage Android on it. https://lineageos.org/
There's a bunch of officially supported phones but most Android phones will have unofficial support also.
I would highly recommend getting a device with official support for the best experience. I wouldn't get any phone not on their supported devices list unless it were free of charge, and even then I'd be a bit sad.
I've only looked into one device en detail, the Jolla.
Okay, no touch typing, maps apps don't start or don't find your location, WhatsApp probably doesn't work and I guess I don't have to start with banking apps.
So what happens when Law Enforcement plugs into your non apple, non Google Phones and runs its forensic apps on it?
They are all most likely trivially compromised. Most of these phones do not have secure enclaves (which e.g. the iPhone had since 2013 and Google Pixel for ages as well) and are usually way behind with Linux security patches, firmware security patches, Android patches outside ASBs. For instance some of the alternatives in the article are routinely 2-5 years behind on Linux and firmware security updates.
Not a minor shortcoming
I looked at Punkt.
They keep saying "If you don’t pay for the product, you are the product". Okay, all fine and well.
But what will my phone still actually be able to do if / when I stop my subscription? Not a single clear answer besides "[…] gradual feature deactivation, and ultimately reverting to a device running AOSP".
Doesn’t really inspire confidence.
> But what will my phone still actually be able to do if / when I stop my subscription?
I have two of them and use one as my spare phone. I wrote this article.
As far as I can tell: all that happens is that you lose your encrypted email account and cloud storage. That's it. Otherwise, the phone continues working as before.
Swiss privacy phones? https://www.punkt.ch
What subscription?
Look at Punkt MC03 + AphyOS, scroll down to "Subscription: 2 years free of charge" and expand.
https://www.punkt.ch/products/mc03-premium-secure-smartphone
There's a little bit - but barely - more about AphyOS in the FAQ if you scroll way down.
No way they employ a minor dark pattern with their cookie pop-up
YIKES tying privacy hardware to a subscription. Maybe they’re two-year burners then, like a partially inverted warranty.
Gradual feature deactivation should be fine if it’s incredibly transparent. So they lose too many sales if they just charge the whole lifetime customer value right upfront, and subscription is the solution.
Thank you for that. Well I do wish them luck!
So which one has the biggest chance to be Android/iOS alternative?
Many many years ago, smarphone users had these choices:
Symbian, BlackBerry, Windows Mobile, PalmOS... what else?
Windows phone still had the best ux of any smartphone, I just wish the ecosystem was there. To this day nothing even comes close to smart tiles.
AMEN! I loved my Lumia and TRULY nothing beat the UX-ability of the Tiles system.
A key question: do any of these phones run an open-source baseband radio? Is that even allowed?
I wrote the article. Not that I am aware of, no. They are almost all Android devices which are available unlocked and with a different OS on from new.
It is possible, but nobody's done it since Symbian.
I'm writing this reply from an AuroraOS phone (a descendant of Sailfish OS).
Yes, it is quite hard to get a non-duopoly smartphone..
Given how many of these were running android, I'm surprised Mudita Kompakt wasn't listed.
I wrote TFA.
Did you note the final paragraph, before the bootnote?
Do please read it and act upon it: let me know.
It makes me sad that the F(x)tec Pro1 X never got a successor. It looks like a very cool phone.
Agreed. Apparently the company worked on the Punkt phones.
< it was 18 cm long, 9 cm wide, and 2.8 cm thick, and weighed just over a third of a kilo. (For our readers in Liberia, Myanmar and elsewhere, that's 7 × 3½ × 1.1 inches, and ¾ lb.)
LMAO
:-D
Glad you liked it.
HarmonyOS from Huawei is no longer based on Android, but it’s not an open OS.
Wonder how this works in a byod corp environment?
What I miss a lot is to be able to have a kind of "virtual" android running in a cloud instance. That could look legit to Google to not be restricted by integrity check and all. But there I could share access to my single instance to my multiple non Google non play store devices, eventually sharing access between multiple persons...
Like for example, every crappy things like banks nowadays requires their own shitty app. It might be a pain in the ass to share between phones or to reinstall if you lose or change your phone. And all these useless app consume really a lot of storage resulting in my phone's being always full.
That would be perfect to access it in a kind of remote access for use once in a while.
err, what? not a single mention of grapheneos in the entire article?
I wrote it.
It is not about phone OSes. It is not about phone hardware. It is about phone VENDORS.
The last paragraph should also explain this to you.
> But can I run my apps?
> Well, probably, yes.
Even with "probably" as a qualifier, this is disingenuous.
Not even Android has caught up to the highest tier of apps available on iOS.
> highest tier of apps available on iOS.
which apps do you mean?
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I usually buy either Xiaomi or Oppo phones and I am pretty happy.
Still a "Google phone" as per the definition of this article. They're looking for Linux-based non-Android phones.
Are Xiaomi phones still legal in the EU with their proprietary chargers? All phones need to have USB-C and USB-PD now.
Which proprietary charger? I always had Xiaomi phones and they always use USB ports.
Xiaomi uses a proprietary charging protocol, I believe it is called Hypercharge. It also requires a proprietary cable with an extra pin/chip.
Looks like they opened the protocol, https://new.c.mi.com/global/post/1895204
Also, it's only for fast charging, you can use any other charger or wire without an issue.
You can charge it just fine with regular usb-c charger. So not a problem.
At very limited charging speeds though. That goes against the USB-PD mandate.
I haven't noticed that when I tried them out. It was still charging faster than the Pixel or iPhone.
> Are Xiaomi phones still legal in the EU
Yes. I wrote the article. I use one.
> with their proprietary chargers?
Not true. It's a generic USB-C device. Does fast charge off any high-power charger, e.g. a Raspberry Pi one.
The wife has a Xiaomi phone, we live in EU.
It was sold normally as any other cellphone.
Which brand do you prefer? I'm currently looking at both Xiaomi 17 Ultra and Oppo Find x9 Ultra.
I wrote the article. My daily driver is a Xiaomi Poco F5.
It is near the end of its life now -- struggles to last the day -- and it was stuffed with bloatware, but it was good for the price in 2023.
My previous handset was an Umidigi F2 which was much better value for money. I will probably go back to them, or another budget brand such as Dooyoo, Blackview, Ulefone, etc.
Both are fine. :)