Where to buy a non-Apple, non-Google smartphone

Post by jasonvorhe » Mon, May 18, 2026, 12:29 AM UTC

em-bee wrote: post #223

jasonvorhe wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't Brave still shipping it?

yes, but only for those extensions that the brave team maintains because all other v2 extensions are likely no longer maintained at all: https://brave.com/blog/brave-shields-manifest-v3/ so in general the problem is not with supporting v2, the problem is that except for a few special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 b…

Post by ShinyLeftPad » Mon, May 18, 2026, 7:45 AM UTC

jjav wrote: post #245

tgsovlerkhgsel wrote: post #76

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 t…

> 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 a…

Post by getpvait22 » Mon, May 18, 2026, 11:02 AM UTC

Post by red369 » Mon, May 18, 2026, 11:37 AM UTC

jjav wrote: post #253

jolmg wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ban…

Post by bornfreddy » Mon, May 18, 2026, 6:24 PM UTC

microtonal wrote: post #269

bornfreddy wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 s…

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).