Hmm, if you have a home network anyways… Maybe you can run AdGuard/PiHole there. I’ve switched to blocky.

I made it listen externally and just configure it in the network settings of my devices to override the automatic DNS server. That way I don’t need to install sth like AdAway on all of my laptops and phones, because I have one central instance.

Is there anything else that blocks video ads? I’ve never found anything except for uBlock which actually works. And I’ve recently learned that you can enable developer mode in Firefox based browsers on Android and install all the Plugins they don’t like you to use on mobile. Like SponsorBlock etc.

You mentioned exactly the two ROMs I’m currently using. GrapheneOS on my Pixel phone. And LineageOS for microG on my Samsung tablet. I’m really happy with both of them.

I don’t use that many proprietary tech so there is little issues for me. My car only has regular old plain bluetooth, so I wouldn’t know. And instead of some add-on firewall/dns adblocker solutions, I’m just using the Librewolf Mull browser with the uBlock plugin.

SXMO?

I think closest to your idea is speech recognition and an AI assistant. You can give it commands that way.

I don’t think there’s much that includes fat fingers and touchscreens and is possible without a graphical UI.

You could buy an old Nokia from the 90s with lots of text menus. That won’t speed things up but it’s certainly less icons, more text and as a bonus you can feel the physical buttons without looking at the phone.

Or a Blackberry with a qwerty-keabord on it. Or use convergence and attach a proper keyboard via USB and install Termux.

Theoretically you could have it project a “holographic” keyboard onto the desk in front of you. Or use VR glasses.

Or hold it sideways and type with 8 fingers simultaneously alike on a stenotype keyboard.

That’d be ways to improve on the keyboard / input method and allow you to use the CLI in it’s current form. I mean the CLI itself is already available. It’s just cumbersome to use it. I’d say a speech assistant is more it, if you want an entirely different concept and not just a better keyboard and/or larger screen.

I’m not sure if I can recommend anything. You probably need to let it go sleep properly. I believe there once used to be seperate settings for the display to turn off, and a seperate time to activate the screen lock. Either I’m confusing Android with something else… Or they removed that setting now that everyone uses a fingerprint reader. Maybe there is an app to control the screen lock. I didn’t find one with a very quick search.

If you put it on standby properly, the processor and other components will enter a low power mode. If you just turn the display black, everything keeps running. And just idling draws more power than the dedicated power-save modes that just wake the processor and important components every now and then to check if something happened.

Ah, thanks. No I didn’t download an additional dictionary. I downloaded the en_uk one now and loaded it by long-pressing on the language. It still doesn’t know half the words. I’ll try restarting the phone.

The language setting still doesn’t work. It changes the layout, but not the dictionary. I’ve been using it for a week now and still nearly every english word is underlined as wrong.

Hmmh. I mean I use a custom rom and Linux out of several reasons. But one of them is I want privacy and to stay in control. Often that requires some extra effort. Using PCs is quite alright for me. But the world of mobile apps is a bit more complicated. I’ve mostly worked around their crappy stuff by using workarounds like SafetyNet, third party apps and stuff. But it’s getting more and more complicated. I kinda stopped bothering. I don’t do NFC payments, I don’t rent electro scooters because all of that stuff doesn’t work. Nobody understands and I’ve complained to bank staff and it’s just not something they care about. We still have a separate working TAN device. But I had to listen to the lecture how good the banking app is for like 3 times. :'-(

I think one of the alternatives is to use something like this: https://github.com/chiteroman/PlayIntegrityFix

If you really need an app. I think I’m going to weed out apps though and see if there are companies who offer better alternatives to their customers or alternative ways to access their services.

I for one just delete apps that stop working on my phone. The PhotoTAN apps usually work fine. But I do my online banking on my laptop so I don’t know about the other stuff.

I think that’s a good example of Emergent Abilities of Large Language Models.

There’s also plenty other tools out there for exactly the same thing.

And you can leak metadata left and right, while having the actual message encrypted.

Wow. What a difference it makes to get ‘your’ interface back.