Hacker News Reader

Comment by Helmut10001 | Hacker News Reader

As I mentioned in another post: By 2026, you'll need two phones. My current setup:

    1) An unmodified iPhone SE (2022 model) with OS support until 2032. This runs all my authentication, banking, health, etc. It is in airplane mode 99% of the time unless I need it.

    2) The second is a Pixel 9a with Graphene OS for daily use, routing and internet access.

This is expensive, but I found it to be the only viable solution to this problem.

View on HN

Do you guys wear cargo pants to carry all these extra devices or are belt clips coming back into style?

If I could get away with carrying a tiny device again instead of lugging around a brick I would, but the world has made it as inconvenient as possible not to.

A BlackBerry from 15 years ago weighed just over 100g and did 80% of what your modern-day pocket computer can.

I mean, did it do 80% of the stuff? Devices have changed a lot.

It did, and some of the things it was more effective at.

I remember BlackBerry OS 4.x (?) had a built-in password manager app and this was in the mid-2000s. By comparison this was added to iOS 18 in 2024.

What it wasn't good at was things like games and toxic consumer rich media bullshit. The industry saw dollar signs with iOS and Android and never wrote apps for the ecosystem.

Remember the days when Instagram was iOS-only?

But here we are, resigned to typing on glass for the rest of our lives because some hippie burnout thought it was a good idea.

You may be intetested in this, if you haven't seen it already.

https://crackberry.com/clicks-communicator

I've never used a Blackberry but it was much more efficient for me to input text (an essential task for a communication device!) on non-iPhone-style phones with physical buttons.

Nothing useful to add except, god I miss my Bold 9700. Every time I slip on this stupid touchscreen keyboard and make a stupid typo on this stupid phone I howl inwardly and wish pain and endless torment upon everyone who took us down this path away from light and goodness. Grumble grumble

The fun part for me is that an old dumb phone could replace, like, 50% of my smartphone usage, if I could use Telegram on it. We even still have 2G networks with no plans to shut them down. So, a J2ME Telegram client has been on my list of potential future projects for quite some time.

When a bank eventually requires a more recent phone to work, they will carry three phones, one for that one bank, one more for the rest of the banks, and a personal one.

Then they might move somewhere else with different banks and different hardware requirements, they will carry 5 phones.

>An unmodified iPhone SE (2022 model) with OS support until 2032

What makes you think it'll be supported for a decade? Looking at the past models, the support period is around 5-7 years. If you count security updates that might get you to 10 years, but at the 7-9 year mark apps will eventually refuse to update because you're not on the latest ios.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPhone#Models

To be fair my 2016 iPad Pro is up to date and can still run any app I throw at it

If you’re not using it regularly, why would you need anything except security updates?

You will also need to accommodate the banking apps updates, banks will not support very old versions of their apps( very old varies but probably about a few months ). Beyond that the new versions may require hardware support that may not be available in a decade old phone.

History here is they will require a recent OS version even if it is unnecessary.

By the time that iPhone SE 3 finally goes unsupported (even the iPhone SE 2 from 2020 has yet to lose support) you'll just buy a cheap refurbished iPhone 16e. Old-gen iPhones are widely available and quite cheap.

i think most here if not all, people complaining by predatory practices of not supporting or liberating your device to whatever you want, are not worried or effected by monetary reasons

for my smartphone usage, i could still use my iphone se (1° gen) perfectly fine and that would include writing some pieces with garageband; which got deprecated and non-download-able because newer versions weren't aimed to my iOS version. heck the vast majority of smartphones aren't compilling software with local hardware (nor i know why someone would do)... guess we could stop with processing power advancement of 2015 just fine to run Whataspp and Instagram. producing hardware is costly, not everyone has a decent job nor minerals are infinite and have no ecological impact

Funny - in some ways I have the opposite. In my version:

The iPhone SE would be the one I use for calls, SMS, etc. It has the SIM card.

The Pixel 9a would be used for everything I don't need a data plan/SIM card (browsing etc).

My needs are a bit different from yours. I like to separate telephony and communication (i.e. WhatsApp, SMS) from everything else. This way, if I want quiet, I just turn that phone to airplane mode. I really don't want to get random pings while I'm doing "real" stuff on my phone.

Or you could just turn on Do Not Disturb…

More painful to manage turning it on/off than to simply leave it in my car.

Over the years, I've spent far too much time with different solutions for managing notifications, etc. Turns out simply keeping the older phone after buying a newer one was the easiest approach. No downsides so far. The old phone has the SIM card. The new one doesn't.

Pulling down on control center and pressing “Do not disturb” is hard to manage?

Looking at the phone, disabling the lock, swiping down, and pressing "Do not disturb" is a lot more than just not looking at the phone.

Also, that's only half of it. I have to move it out of "Do not disturb" at some point. Or set a timeline for it. Why should I when I just don't need to?

Also, it's been years since I used "Do not disturb". Does it show notification icons in the drawer on top? That's a definite no-no.

No notifications don’t show anywhere.

And with focus modes with location based triggers, you can set it to turn DND on when you get home and it automatically turns off when you leave home.

I'm also a big GrapheneOS user, but I'm lucky enough that my banking and authentication apps run fine on GrapheneOS, so no need for a second phone.

If they stopped, I think I would seriously consider swapping banks and whatever else instead of using a different OS.

There are enough non-shitty banks and credit unions, at least in the US, that you should be able to easily switch banks to a better one. They have no moat.

The most is ATM access if you want that.

Most credit unions use "shared branching" which mostly solves ATM access.

FWIW my US bank works on GrapheneOS and they refund all ATM fees, so you can use any ATM you want. The only issue I've run into with them is they have a Zelle integration which is only available on the phone, and on GrapheneOS it just loads to a blank white screen. But that seems to be Zelle's fault. The bank is Charles Schwab if anyone is looking for a currently-compatible-with-GrapheneOS bank in the US.

Charles Schwab also supports the current administration for anyone that wants to bank morally.

GrapheneOS is not rooted. Most banking apps work fine on it.

https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

https://grapheneos.org/usage#banking-apps

It's true that GrapheneOS is not rooted, and, unlike other non-rooted custom ROMs, allows re-locking the bootloader. But, whether a banking app will work depends on what level of Google Play attestation they require. While most banking apps work fine on it, a significant minority do not.

To be fair, this seems to be mostly a European problem. U.S. banks do not seem to enforce Play (dis)Integrity.

Not necessarily an european problem either. Maybe It varies by country but at least none of my 3 finnish banks check for play integrity.

I know OP checks for integrity/for third party apps. My guess for your ones would be Nordea, Danske and S?

Yeah I wish we could do without a bank in modern life. When bitcoin first began I was really in support of it because I saw potential in freeing us from the dark stranglehold of the banking industry. Everyone just manages their own digital money.

But nope the cryptobros just turned it into another pyramid speculation scheme and the governments ruined the customer independence with their KYC stuff. Now it's just an online version of the old system where the exchanges are the new banks.

There's a crowd-sourced dataset here: https://privsec.dev/posts/android/banking-applications-compa...

This is a sensible move. Plus you can just keep your "authentication" phone at home instead of having it on you when you're out for no good reason.

Not if you want to use tap-to-pay systems.

I wonder if this makes room in the market for some simpler device for payments. Something like a wearable that you can tap-to-pay and has the signed software attenuation but nothing else so you can't be tracked using GPS.

This will be the answer as we move away from screens as phones. Smart watches have slowly edged in, but I foresee some 'no screen' being the answer to payments, access control, etc

> Something like a wearable that you can tap-to-pay and has the signed software attenuation but nothing else so you can't be tracked using GPS.

That's a nice idea. You could have a simple card-shaped device with no screen or buttons, and call that a "credit card".

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

“Be kind. Don't be snarky.”

“Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith.”

Heh yeah, my comment does kinda scream credit card. What I really mean is something programmable for narrow use-cases like multiple forms of payments, transit, or other stuff like building access.

Sounds like... a card?

Long ago we used to have ‘mini’ credit cards. You could get a two-thirds size magstripe card from some major banks that’d go right on your keychain. Discover had a cute little bean keychain with a flip-out magstripe card (the Discover2Go) as well.

At the same time there was also the Exxon-Mobil Speedpass RFID fob, and I remember there being a huge discussion about “the battle of the keychain” and whose payment instrument would win being on your keys to be used the most alongside your loyalty cards.

that exists. It's called Felica, and it's used all over Japan. train passes, vending machine, convenience stores, many restaurants. Built into iphone and a few androids.

Note that the payments are tied to a card/chip but you can (at the moment) buy new card no id/registration required

Nice. We had this in the 90s in Holland. It was called chipknip. (Knip is old slang for wallet).

It was really like digital cash, the money was loaded onto a chip. So if you lost it you lost all the money. There was no pin code either, just like a real wallet. Unfortunately it was not really anonymous because the Dutch government are really into surveillance.

It didn't really last very long, it was only popular for parking machines. In those days 2G was expensive so validating transactions online was rare.

Curve sell rings to use for this. https://www.curve.com/wearables/

Perhaps an NFC smart card you can carry in your wallet or phone case :)

> I wonder if this makes room in the market for some simpler device for payments.

Like a credit card? They've been around for some time.

Tap a bankcard? You can even tape it to the back of your phone

Tape to pay, that is.

I might be paranoid, but I like that my bankcards are in a metal case (I got it because it's water/dustproof, but I like the bonus) and I like that Wallet only activates the rfid for a second, then I'm no longer broadcasting.

Even if someone cloned your card info, they couldn't use it to do anything.

Having cards on back of phone triggers the phones NFC reader for the cards ship, causing apps to launch or other messages to appear on screen.

Just use your credit card

And adding to this: using the card gives me peace of mind because it never runs out of battery. If I only used my phone for payments and it died while I was out, I would be screwed. Can't call a friend, can't pay for transit, I guess I'm walking for hours to get home? Since I use the card to pay, if my phone dies, the worst thing that happens to me is I might need to look at a physical map to figure out which train to take home.

Since 2018 you can still use tap when your iPhone battery has died. It works for transit passes, keys, and some payment methods. They call it Express Cards and it will continue to work for ~4 hours after your phone has died. iPhone's keep a "Power Reserve" for NFC when dead.

https://support.apple.com/guide/security/express-cards-with-...

Smartwatches are great for this.

Yeah, in low-fraud scenarios it's a very good idea. Otherwise, though, you have the problem of what happens when a robber takes it.

I'm thinking a ring type device might be better--put a pulse oximeter into it, you unlock it with your phone, it remains unlocked only so long as it gets basically perfect data from the oximeter, locks if it fails for a second. Thus said robber can neither snatch your ring nor cut off your finger and use it. I like the metal mesh straps that can hold my device very snugly against my skin without being tight and that would be good enough, but a looser strap would not.

The smartwatches I've owned with payments support (Pixel Watch series) automatically lock when they are not worn, presumably using the heart-rate sensor.

In fact, a smartwatch might be the ideal "second personal portable computer that's just for auth and banking" that is being proposed by various commentors here.

Requiring that everyone carry a smartwatch (or other smartwatch-based compute nugget) around to participate in civic life is a bit less onerous than requiring everyone carry around a smartphone; smartwatches are both cheaper and smaller.

And, to me at least, smartwatches are much more of an appliance than a smartphone is. Nobody's really begging to sideload apps onto their smartwatch, or to install an alternate launcher onto them, etc. Smartwatches just kind of "do what they should obviously do given the hardware design and HCI affordances" — kind of like a calculator.

As a bonus, unlike smartphones, most smartwatches to this day still aren't independently connected to cellular networks; so the average wiretapped smartwatch can't be used to surveil your location and activities in quite the same way that a wiretapped smartphone can.

If you have a lot of resources to protect against or known risk, you segment.

For example, do most daily transactions at one bank, and keep the rest at another.

This happens a lot in companies and government - you outsource payable operations to different division of government or a contractor. Hire one to do custody of money, another to process disbursements.

That's what I do too (not iOS + GrapheneOS but the result is the same) as I was tired of fighting to make my bank apps and itsme (digital identity app in Belgium) work on my rooted phone.

Everytime I have to use a stock phone I'm appalled at the ads and I have absolutely no trust in any US or Chinese manufacturer. So I use them only for banking and digital id because that's presumably not what they actually care about.

It's not that expensive, I think many people have an old Android phone lying around, it doesn't have to be up to date.

It is very ironic that the solution is using an old, insecure phone full of unpatched holes for all important banking and id business, because that one is vendor-allowed while your state-of-the-art GrapheneOS is not.

If only banks cared about state-of-the-art security.

In reality, banks couldn’t care less. They only care about checking boxes and don’t consider where these boxes come from; every unchecked box is a risk.

Did the latest sham "security audit" say that root is bad? They'll block it.

My job's SSO moved to provider that either required an unrooted phone or a reliable Voice auth.

For 2 years the voice authentication worked fine (they call me, I type in a number) on my regular rooted phone. Then one random morning I just stopped getting the phone calls. "Network said no".

Complete lock out, nothing I could do except go out and panic-buy an unrooted phone not running Lineage and using a modern Android version. (I tried my older unofficial lineage phones without root, and no dice.)

I opted for a good phone I could postmarket later, but gosh did it set me back almost 1/5 of my monthly salary.

This does sounds like the situation where the employer should provide you with the phone.

Indeed. Never spend your own money on work related expenses. If your job requires a phone, they need to provide one.

I take a different approach:

I run a proxmox server on my home Lan with all the services and storage I want, including a wireguard server. My Android phone can then connect to my home LAN services from anywhere in the world (my ISP provides static public IP addresses).

My Android device is then a simple terminal to all my "stuff". It can be locked down as much as they want it to be, as long as it can run WireGuard. I have no use for a rooted phone. In fact I want it to be as hardened as possible in case of theft.

Pretty much the same setup here. Pixel 9 Pro GOS + iPhone 15 (USB-C everything!). The iPhone is a Canadian model that retains the SIM slot.

Most of my banking apps work fine on GrapheneOS, but I've adopted this because I'm confident they'll eventually break. And access to Apple Pay is nice.

Carrying two phones is annoying, but, agency over my main computing device is worth the price.

Wow, my comment has really taken off! In both directions! Let me clarify some things.

- I bought the iPhone SE 2022 second-hand for 150 EUR. I think this is a fair price, but it's still expensive given that I leave it lying around 99% of the time, which I still feel is a waste of resources, regardless of my motivation.

- My main reason for having two phones is pretty simple. I think browsing and daily internet use just don't go together anymore with authentication, banking and health. I also didn't want to carry a critical key to my digital infrastructure around with me every day, especially in bars (etc.). Having a separate phone helps me to treat different aspects of my life differently. No worries, I don't have to carry two phones with me all the time.

- Yes, I do other things to generally reduce my digital footprint: I use different browsers for different things, such as admin work and social media (in those rare cases where I still use it). I also self-host behind VPN and have moved many apps to my internal stack, which gives me better control over what communicates with what. For example, I use WhatsApp Bridge so I don't have to use the app directly on phones anymore. I self-host Invidious with privacy-redirect for Fennec for YouTube, etc. Over time, all of this has slowly helped me regain my freedom, and it actually feels liberating.

- My path may not be your path.

Phones are cheap, serivce isn't. If currency goes fully digital, not having two devices is irresponsible.

I have a similar setup, but no need for your "bank/govt app phone" to be an expensive device. A cheapest $120 smartphone money can buy is good enough.

Then you choose the flagship device you're going to use 99% of the time on the basis of how easily you can unlock the bootloader/root.

Yes, I got my iPhone SE 2022 used for 150 EUR!

This. I've had to run two phones for some time now, and have just accepted this is the new normal.

I do something similar but it's iPhone SE plus olympus camera plus laptop. The laptop is where all the libre software lives, and the camera is (of course) for taking pictures with. I don't use the phone for anything except boring essentials, for the most part.

> This is expensive, but I found it to be the only viable solution to this problem.

Is it really? £150 on backmarket for a phone which will last 10 years doesn't feel expensive.

Makes sense to me to run any banking on a secure device anyway.

How is a pixel with grapheneos not a secure device?

Ps no it's not rooted but it won't pass full play integrity so it will usually be treated as such.

Also, a properly configured root is not a weakness just like having a computer where you don't log in as admin unless you really need to can be just fine.

A £150 back market phone is not a secure device. It probably stopped receiving security patches a month after its release.

The iPhone SE 2022 I am speaking of above came 150 EUR used. It will receive updates till ~2032.

I used to get a physical security key from my bank. Perhaps I should get a bank device with a touch screen for banking only and they could then stay the hell off of my personal phone.

You'll still need to bring your iPhone out with you then and thus it will capture your location and more for the companies to data-mine.

Why? Do you have many unplanned urgent banking needs? Everything that needs an unmodified phone can wait until I get home.

Yeah kinda. Because even paying something online now requires 2FA from that banking app :(

Sometimes when party tickets come online I have to be really quick to buy them for early bird price.

Sounds expensive using that hardware, but we can achieve the same using cheaper phones, I like the idea, thanks.

Cheapest new Googled Android phone is < $100, Pixel 9a on sale <$400 and Graphene is free, still (much) cheaper than the latest gen spiPhone.

> As I mentioned in another post: By 2026, you'll need two phones. My current setup:

Cheers, maybe by 2027 unattested devices won't be allowed on the internet. It's not a solution. The problem didn't exist a few years ago, the idea that it will not continue to its inevitable conclusion within a few years without real solutions is laughable.

Wait until Graphene is classified as a hacking tool and Estonia convinces the EU to fine a million Euros a day any company providing services to host its website. Wait until, "in the spirit of reconciliation," the US goes along with it, too.

Wait until unattested desktops aren't allowed on the internet.

I understand that you’re using it as an example, but I still find it very misleading. Estonia is pro-privacy and has consistently voted against Chat Control.

On the other hand, France has been undermining privacy for a few years now. They supported Chat Control, have attacked GrapheneOS, etc.

Many of us would need the unmodified one to have a working SIM because a lot of those providers require SMS in their auth flow. Expensive for many of us. For me it'll mean I have to do these things on a computer. Until they come for that one too of course.

Don't they usually SMS you a TOTP code that you could then just type into the unmodified one? I've seen some apps that snoop on your SMS to automatically grab the TOTP code but I've never come across one that wouldn't let you manually type it in.

I use the eSim feature in my iPhone, this worked well.

Do you mean you have the same esim on both phones but normally activated on the burner phone except when you need it on the unmodified one w/o access to burner phone?

I can have multiple free esims with my operator. Since I have my auth-phone in airplane most of the time, I don't care about two ringing phones (or the small privacy caveat that comes with sharing the same phone number across multiple devices).

the iPhone still does bluetooth transmissions/pings even in airplane mode (the find my device thing) and no way to disable

the only way to disable any transmissions is to turn off the device

Bluetooth's the same RF chip as wifi in new phones isn't it? Can't just exacto knife a trace on the board without murdering everything I take it?

I could be wrong, but on a lot of mobile SOCs all of the modems are in the same chip as the CPU. I think you would have better luck removing the connection to the antenna

I've turned off find my device on my device.

Although, I am still using 17.7.2 that won't stop nagging me to upgrade to iOS 26.2.

I don't want to because I know I'll hate it.

you can kill the ota nagging very easily without any side effects, try searching for tvos profile

Wasn't aware of this, thanks!

Also found out that the profiles also expire, so you need to update those in order to skip the update nagging. Apple's lolling all the way.

iPhones will transmit bluetooth beacons even if turned off. Fortunately the battery goes completely flat after a couple of weeks or so and then they no longer do. Unfortunately this is not very healthy for the battery.

> iPhone still does bluetooth transmissions/pings even in airplane mode ... the only way to disable any transmissions is to turn off the device

I used to be under the impression that:

- Airplane Mode via Control Center icon, true.

- Cellular, WiFi, and Bluetooth off, via Settings, not true.

Meaning, if you turn those off specifically, you are not talking to towers or access points or broadcasting a persistent bluetooth ID.

Having Kagi'd a bit just now, maybe the thing that can't be turned off is NFC?

https://www.simplymac.com/ios/can-you-turn-off-nfc-iphone

If that's the case, then I'd hold this as a different threat model than not being able to turn off WiFi and Cellular.

Very curious if an iPhone or iPad with all accessible settings off, including for NFC turning off Apple Pay, NFC tag reading, etc., leaving only this background NFC on, if there are still persistent identifiers being broadcast.

Yes in settings it turns it completely off. I verified it once with a BT sniffer.

> By 2026, you'll need two phones...

Need? Unless and/or until the ability to log in and do your banking, healthcare, etc. via desktop/laptop goes away, then you don't need a phone to do any of that. Yes, 2FA may be required but in the tangential experience of myself, my partner and my two closest friends, we have multiple 2FA options available to us for our banking/healthcare apps that don't require a smartphone.

I see this point all the time - "You can't bank or do important life stuff without a phone!!!" and it's just, largely, bullshit. I don't do any "important life stuff" on my phone.

Beyond that, even if you had to have a phone to perform those tasks, I'd strongly argue that if you feel you need a second phone, then, and I know this will come off as reductive and unproductive, I think the idea of spending less time on your phone and on the internet, and more time "touching more grass" and interacting with the community and world immediately around you, might apply.

You don’t do any important stuff on your phone. Others might not have the luxury.

Notably, in Vietnam people use QR payments a lot. If you want to interact with them by, say, paying at a small local restaurant, you’ll need a phone (or a stack of cash, and please do prepare change).

>... or a stack of cash...

So I don't, actually, need a phone in that instance...

Hmm, yeah, I guess you’re right. There are tradeoffs, but if they’re worth the benefits for you – yes, you can live without a smartphone.

For this to work for me personally, I would need webapps for ride-hailing and preferably food delivery, and to learn how to navigate the city without a map. I think I might be able to pull it off for some of the places I live in.

Just because you don’t need it doesn’t mean other people don’t. Heck, I have no need for a rooted phone so I only use a normal phone, but I respect that others might need a rooted phone.

It depends on location. In my whereabouts banking and e-signing requires one of two 2FA solutions both are mobile-only.

Theoretically there is a third option with USB ID card reader to use certificate stored in ID card. But I never saw one used in practice. It’s a PITA to get those devices to work on anything beyond Windows. And they’re accepted in relatively few places.

At that point why not just use the bank's website?

That's what I do. I don't install apps for stuff I can just do on the web.

Because that needs 2FA to login and guess what the only way to get the code is.

Does the government ban getting SMS messages on your rooted phone?

It's not considered secure enough.

Not that I'm aware of but if banks don't offer it, which most dont, good luck.

Why though? What are you doing on your Pixel that wouldn’t be more secure doing on an iPhone with a double hop or dual-encapsulated VPN?

My main reason is that I wanted to separate browsing/daily use from auth/banking. These two things just don't belong together, from my perspective.

Is camera quality the same on rooted and locked Pixel? For example rooted Sony phones have terrible photo / video quality.

Yes, you can use the "pixel camera" app on GrapheneOS

I already willingly do this with browsers. Firefox gets maximum adblocking and other extensions, Safari gets to touch my bank.

Is there a resource for what phones are known good to run GrapheneOS?

It's Pixels only at the moment; the GOS team are apparently working with another hardware vendor to produce a suitable device, but that's still a long way off.

meanwhile, I have a problem remembering to charge one phone.

With all due respect - I totally understand you may need a rooted phone, I’m just curious what you use it for? I’ve never had a modified or rooted phone so I don’t know of any of the reasons you might need one.

Some people are really into security, some people are really into trains.

You start to use it because you care about privacy and your data. But now it's just to avoid all the crap Google and OEMs put into the phone. Same story is with PC and Windows. To quote one smart guy: "I'm not in the mood to be treated as a chimp." And that's it.

That’s fair! Doesn’t sound like something that’s likely to get the majority of users interested though unfortunately

System wide adblocking, being able to backup any app are the top two reasons I'd still root my phones if i had any choice. You'd be amazed by the battery life improvement you'd get by just blocking ads..

I deliberately avoid all banking apps even though i didn't root my phone, but i have to use Google Pay a lot. So... That's the only reason this phone I'm typing on isn't rooted.

I do have a VPN which blocks a lot of ads at the dns level but better Adblock would be nice

I want to backup my entire phone on a local server I own. Apps, app data, settings, WiFi passwords, call logs, etc. Good luck without root.

Cool

To stop third parties selling your location information.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2024/12/...

Interesting, how does rooting your phone help you avoid that?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com