[realusername]

> Phones are not PCs/general-purpose computers.

That's just the opinion of the manufacturer, we don't have to agree.

Phones have banking and government apps, they are general purpose computers from their usage alread

[nine_k]

If something currently serves as a general-purpose computer for most people, it's an (Android) phone. It's affordable, it has integrated graphics, video, audio, trackpad, and keyboard, it has excellent networking, it's easily programmable and has a plethora of apps for all cases.

It does not have a built-in Basic-like language for immediate fiddling; this is sad, of course.

[lrvick]

If you do not mind running an endless pile of proprietary software and granting several third parties the right to track you and have remote root access to your device via hundreds of binary blobs, then Android is great. Even CalyxOS and GrapheneOS cannot escape the hell that is the vendor partition. Not to mention binary blobs from Qualcomm etc that target particular kernel versions which guarantee your hardware will be a brick in 2-4 years when it is no longer possible to use modern kernels because Qualcomm moved on to new chipsets and abandoned the last gen.

I spent the better part of a year doing Android OS dev only to conclude there just is no way to trust it or make it sustainable.

The Librem 5, Pinephone, and the Precursor are shaping up to be decent options. For now no phone at all suits me fine.

[pjmlp]

Plenty of options on the respective stores.

[bitwize]

Bankers and governments don't want your phone to be a general purpose computer. That's why you can't run your banking app on a rooted phone. From a security standpoint, "general purpose computing" is really just "arbitrary code execution" -- generally a bad thing.

We are approaching the sunset of general purpose computing in the consumer space. There's nothing you can do. Accept it and move on.

[kube-system]

“General purpose computing” does not imply any particular security model, it refers to a device with a variety of end user purposes.

It is in contrast to a special purpose computer, which smartphones clearly are not.

[GekkePrutser]

> We are approaching the sunset of general purpose computing in the consumer space. There's nothing you can do. Accept it and move on

I agree that governments and big business (not just banks, think about media services with DRM) don't want us to have full control of our computers for many reasons.

I disagree we just have to accept it though. I will keep fighting that forever.