Logged into my banking app for it to tell my that my version of Android is outdated, leaving me vulnerable to attacks, and that I need to update my system. I see no updates and sure enough, the manufacturer just recently declared my phone EOL.
I could still log in to my banking app after dismissing the warning but how long is that going to last? Am I actually in danger of being hacked while browsing the Internet on my phone?
Do I really need to splurge on a new phone now? There’s nothing wrong with this one. Fuck smartphones, honestly- sure, this shit also happens on PCs with Windows, but you usually get at least a decade of support. I’ve had this phone for less than five years, and at least with computers you could stick your preferred version of Linux on your outdated device to get more life out of it
It’s also really cool how everyone in modern Western society is essentially dependent on one of two Yank megacorps to function, since you need an online bank account to verify your identity for basic shit like healthcare, social security and so on and those require either a Google Store or iPhone app
Probably a stupid question, but are there any “Linux equivalent” for smartphones?
There are some phones like the LibRem 5 and PinePhone, but they are very uncompetitive in terms of price per specs.
price per spec isn’t the worst aspect of it, though I suppose this is true. (the prices aren’t insane but the specs are very bad because chipmakers have very bad mainline linux compatibility)
What’s worse for the average person is the base functionality is a little bit unstable still, the app library is small and requires a lot of fiddling to make common services work that would “just work” on a typical smartphone, and they don’t exactly even solve OPs problems directly since LTE will eventually go the way of the dodo too, and banking apps don’t support it. Banking websites do, and linux phones generally run up-to-date mainline linux applications not out of date abandoned android versions, so it is workable for some people, but its not nearly as good of an experience relative to an android/ios smartphone as desktop linux is relative to windows
Oh and no unified system of push notifications on linux phones, so you have a tradeoff between battery life (sleeping all the time and only waking on calls and texts), vs actually getting non-SMS messages (need to wake up periodically and let every app individually check for messages). And that’s on top of the battery life already being bad
There are custom operating systems for phones but all of them are supported for specific models and may stop being updated after a while on older phones because development depends on volunteer work. Also you need to know how to unlock bootloader for them and may brick the device if you do something wrong while flashing the rom, so be sure to use a guide the first time. The main two custom roms I know are GrapheneOS(only for Pixel models) and LineageOS.
Edit: This is useless for OP though since bank apps don’t work if they detect you are using a custom ROM.
Only affects stone banking apps. Mine works fine for now in Graphene.
Some companies have tried and it’s not going that well.