[bheadmaster]

> Not really comfortable with the direction this technology is going when it has to be paired with an app

I extremely agree. The fact that most people have phones nowdays is exploited without limits - what if someone just doesn't want to have a phone? Suddenly, a large amount of things are just unavailable for them. And that is considered okay because "nobody is forcing you to have all those things".

At least if having a phone was made mandatory by the government, the public could demand some kind of standards of privacy and security. This way, it's the worst of both worlds - phones are de-facto mandatory, but they're not officially mandatory, so phone manufacturers can do whatever they want because "nobody is forcing you to have a phone"... And all the other manufacturers can require you to have a phone because "everyone has a phone, duh".