I don't want to faff around with physical SIMs, so I went looking for the cheapest way to keep my number for the longest time. There are a whole bunch of providers out there who will do low-cost monthly contracts (like Spusu), which I don't want. Similarly, there are some pure PAYG providers who require you to top-up with £10 every few months (like 1pmobile).

In the end, I went with Lyca Mobile (affiliate link). Total cost was £10 which should last indefinitely.

The process isn't particularly straightforward. Here's how it works:

First, add a PAYG SIM to your basket and select "eSIM"

Next, click the Bin icon (🗑) in the top right. You'll get this pop-up:

Select "Discard plan & add credit" - you'll return to this screen:

The minimum top-up is a tenner, so select that. From there, you can add details of your old number, its porting code, and when you want the port to take place. Then pay.

Done! You'll receive your eSIM instantly. Scan it with your phone and you'll be up and running. The phone number porting will take as long as it takes.

OK, but will Lyca let you keep a number indefinitely? Here's what they say:

How long can I keep my number for if I don’t use any of Lyca Mobile’s services?

Normally we will keep your number for 120 days if you do not use our service. However, you may also keep your Lycamobile number for up to 1 year without using our service. Just dial *139*9999# from your Lycamobile and follow the instructions on the screen. Please be aware that there will be a fixed annual fee of £15 which will be deducted from your balance.

Source

Note, their chatbot says the fixed fee is a fiver. Like all half-baked AI systems, it is wrong.

So, what does "using" consist of? This is hard to find out! I think is any chargeable event. Based on their current PAYG pricing the cheapest options are:

• Send an SMS for 23p
• Use 1MB of data for 15p.

If I'm right, you could use 1MB of data every 120 days. That would deplete your credit in about 22 years. More than long enough for me!

There you have it, I'm pretty sure that's the cheapest way to keep a UK mobile number on an eSIM. You can keep it switched off for 119 days, flick it on, send a quick message, then shut it down again.

Click the referral link to join Lyca Mobile

But the big problem with those solutions is that you lose a fair bit of value unless you exhaust the SIM. If you buy a month-long package but are only on holiday for a week, that's a waste. Similarly, if you buy 2GB of data but only use 500MB, you've wasted your money.

So I'm trying Roamless which is a PAYG eSIM.

The concept is pretty simple:

1. Stick $10 in your account.
2. Visit Ruritania on holiday for a week and use data which costs $1.25/GB
3. Come home.
4. Fly off to Utopia but use 50MB of data during your 2 hour transfer at Blefuscu airport ($2.50/GB)
5. During your fortnight in Utopia, visit Lilliput where your phone automatically roams to the local network ($1.50/GB)

And so on. The credit in your wallet decreases with use; not with time. You aren't forced to buy multi-GB bundles which you can't use. Coverage is worldwide, so you don't need to spend time looking for a local SIM.

The Good

It works! I signed up, paid my money, installed the Android app, and my eSIM installed itself. When I landed in Morocco, my phone seamlessly connected to the local network.

I spent a week on holiday and paid a couple of dollars for half a gigabyte of data. I think that's pretty reasonable.

Turns out most of the places I went had WiFi, so buying a dedicated SIM with a few GB of data just for Morocco would have been a waste of money.

Speeds seemed fine. I connected to a couple of different Moroccan networks on 3G and 4G - I don't think there's 5G in Marrakesh. I didn't run any speed-tests, but for maps, a bit of photo-sharing, and Signal/WhatsApp calls it did the trick.

As well as data, you can use your credit to make local phone calls. I don't think I'd make much use of the feature - but it is good to know it exists.

The Bad

Data costs are reasonable, but not the cheapest. You will inevitably find a better per/GB deal if you buy a local SIM with an inclusive data bundle. If you know you're going to be somewhere for a week and you're sure you'll use all the data, it might make sense to use a different product.

Costs are in US$ - so you'll need a card with low/no foreign exchange fees to get the most value for money.

As with any roaming connection, latency is increased vs using a local SIM. My IP address placed me in Belgium. That didn't cause any problems, but you probably don't want to play games which require a low ping.

The SIM will roam anywhere - even your home country. You'll need to either disable the eSIM or switch off roaming when you're at home. But, on the plus side, UK prices aren't too expensive.

There's no inbound calling to the SIM. If you're going to places which require a local number, you might find it convenient to pick up a local SIM to get a temporary number.

The App

The app isn't mandatory. You can install the eSIM via a QR code as per normal. But you'll need to use the app if you want to take advantage of any of the discount / referral codes. The app steps you through setting up the eSIM which is useful if you've never used it before.

The app itself is a bit bare-bones and doesn't look great. But it is the sort of thing you'll go into once to set up and then never again, unless you need to top up.

It will show you how much you've used and what your balance is.

The app has a VoIP client, so you can make local calls when roaming. Again, the prices aren't the cheapest per minute - but they come out of your credit and you aren't forced to buy a calling bundle.

Oh, and as a nice feature, when you return home - it reminds you to turn it off.

Not many apps will tell you to spend less money with them!

Verdict

Roamless takes all the hassle out of roaming through multiple countries.

If you're the sort of person who goes to one place for a set period of time, you'll almost always be better off buying a local SIM. But if you flit between countries and don't want to spend the entire journey on your phone, Roamless will suit you just fine.

There are no gimmicks or upsells - you get PAYG data which you can use anywhere.

The Obligatory Referral Link

If you use code TERENCEN3R, we both get a $3 bonus.

This was the era of the iPhone 5 and Android KitKat. BlackBerry was trying to have (yet another) resurgence and Nokia was desperately trying to keep Windows Phone alive. What advice did I give then, and is it still relevant?

Stay Sceptical

In at number five is just stay sceptical. I mean, quite often, lots of mobile viruses and mobile scams spread by text message, by email, by Twitter. And these are all things that we get on our phone. But for some reason, because they seem to come from people we trust, all of our savvy just goes out the window. When you see a message from someone which purports to be your friend, just think, does this sound like them? Is what they're asking me to do a rational thing to do? And when you go and click on a link that someone has sent, check to see if it's actually taking you to where you expect to go.

Still entirely relevant, sadly. You've probably received an SMS saying "Mum, I've dropped my phone. This is my temporary number." Or accidentally clicked on an advert which prompts you to hand over your credentials.

Scams are everywhere. One of the best things you can do to protect yourself and your data is to be less trusting.

Browsers are getting better at sharing real-time blocklists. So clicking on an extremely dangerous website is likely to generate a scary warning. But these technologies aren't perfect.

Don't just change your password

So what can I do if I have ended up putting my password into a fake site?

The most important thing you have to do is, if it's something like Twitter, go to settings and you'll see all the applications which have authenticated against that. You just need to go and delete all of those and then change your password.

This is something that a lot of sites still get wrong. If a baddie has got your password, they can use OAuth to connect your account to their service. Changing your password doesn't sever the link!

2FA

If you want to be really security conscious, you can turn on something called two-factor authentication. This means you give your mobile number to the social network. When you try to log in, what will happen is you type in your username and your password and then Twitter will send you a text message and it says your one-time password is 12345. You type that code in and you're logged in. That way, if someone does manage to get your username and password, it doesn't matter because they don't have your phone as well.

I encouraged people to use SMS as their preferred way of enabling Multi-Factor Authentication. Back then, that was pretty much the only choice for normal people. Facebook wouldn't introduce non-SMS MFA until 2018.

Nowadays, I'd probably recommend using an authenticator app which generates TOTP codes. SMS is basically fine for normal people - yes, it can be spoofed or hacked at a network level, but that's unlikely unless you're specifically targetted.

Official App Channels

Don't download apps outside of the official app store. Now, the app stores aren't perfect. You can get dodgy apps in there, but there is some safety in numbers.

Reluctantly, I think I still agree with this. Back in the day, it was too easy to install dodgy apps. Drive-by downloads were common, and Android had a particularly poor model of security.

I value independent app stores like F-Droid and Aurora - but there's no doubt that they are generally for the more advanced users. And, yeah, app stores aren't perfect, but they're still less likely to completely infect your phone and send premium rate messages.

Virus Checkers

you can download apps which are virus checkers of a sort. I'm quite keen on Lookout, which is a great Android app. Whenever you install something, it will check it and it will look through the list of permissions, alert you, but it will also look at the app and see whether it's been reported that it's a scam or a virus.

These days, I think virus checking apps are less useful. The permissions model of Android and iOS are much improved, and it's harder for apps to do bad things in the background.

If you have a corporate device (or personal device with work mode) an app scanner is usually mandatory as part of your employer's Mobile Device Management policies. Again, I'm not totally convinced they're a brilliant idea. They can be useful for peace of mind, or to prevent certain classes of attacks.

Password Managers

Lots of people use really short passwords. Why? Because they're easy to remember and they want to be able to type them into their mobile phone. And this means that people quite often have the same password for Twitter as they've got for Facebook, as they've got for email, as they've got for everything else. This is a real security nightmare because it means that if your Twitter password gets hacked, those hackers have access to everything, all your accounts. So my top tip is use a password manager.

Yup! No notes. Get a password manager. I like BitWarden - but pick whichever meets your needs.

Physical Security

This is my number one tip for mobile security. Buy a wrist strap.

On your phone, you probably have a case. It's got a little hole and you can buy a lanyard, a bit of string or a bit of leather that you clip onto your phone and you wrap around your wrist while you're using it.

Recent reports said 10,000 phones are stolen in London every month, 120,000 a year. That's just in London. Across the UK, it's hundreds of thousands. If you're wearing a wrist strap, it is much more unlikely that someone will be able to yank the phone away from you, because if they do yank the phone away from you, chances are it's unlocked because you are making your call, you're looking at Google Maps and hey presto, they've got access to all of your email, all of your documents. They can start making premium rate phone calls straight away.

I still stand by this. In London, a phone is stolen every 6 minutes - only 2% of them are ever recovered.

Strap your phone to you. Don't leave it on the table when you're in a pub. If you need to check directions, turn away from the street and hold it in both hands.

Phones are now worth thousands of pounds. They are a high-value target. You probably have a banking app on your phone - or contactless payment set up. Treat your phone as though you were carrying a big wodge of notes.

Another part of physical security is:

The other thing that you need to do is set a PIN or a password on your phone. You can use facial recognition or a thumbprint scanner. Anything to stop a casual thief being able to get into your phone is of paramount importance.

If your phone is stolen while it is unlocked, you're shit out of luck. If it's locked, it is much harder for all but the most determined attacker to get in to it. Make sure all your banking apps have passwords on them.

Similarly, a SIM lock is essential. You don't want someone ejecting your SIM card and making expensive calls on it.

I also suggested:

Set up Find My Phone. If you're on Android, Android Device Manager, this means that if your phone is stolen, you can find out where it is. But much more importantly, you can click a button and have your phone be completely wiped

Again, solid advice. Perhaps all that will happen is you'll see your phone visit China. But at least you'll be able to prevent the thieves getting into your data.

VPNs

One of the hosts made this comment:

If you're not familiar, a VPN is when you make a secured connection back to a server and all the data through that pipe is encrypted. And the reason for doing that is that when I'm in a coffee shop or I'm on a public Wi-Fi network or something like that, it keeps my data secure because it doesn't matter whether the app does a good job of securing it or not. It gets it all encrypted as it goes over the network.

Nowadays a VPN is less useful than it was. Let's Encrypt launched later that year and with it brought a dramatic increase in the number of Internet services which used HTTPS. The popularity of HSTS increased, which means that most apps refuse to connect to non-secure versions of their site.

VPNs do protect you if unencrypted data is flowing through your device - but that is becoming rarer. I lean slightly towards the opinion that a VPN is usually a bad idea. They are, effectively, an untrusted connection between you and your destination. A malicious VPN - or one ordered to behave in such a way - is worse than no VPN.

What would I add to the list?

I think there are a few sensible additions.

0. Back up your data. Accept that, at some point, your phone will be compromised or stolen. Ensure you have safe backups of all your stuff.
   • Actually test your backups. For most people, that means regularly look inside them to make sure all your photos are still there.
1. Activate your phone's emergency features. Learn which buttons to press to automatically lock and/or disable your phone.
   • Practice using them. You may need to use them in an emergency.
2. Make sure your Password Manager and MFA tokens can be accessed from another device.
   • Once your phone has gone, you will still need to get into accounts to lock them down.
3. Install an ad-blocker. Not only will it protect your sanity; you're less likely to see dodgy content.
   • Do it on mobile and larger devices.

Stay safe out there!

Yes, users should probably take better care of their digital credentials and bury them in a digital vault. But there are some things which are simply impossible for a user to protect against. Take, for example, a SIM-swap attack.

You probably have your phone-number tied to all sorts of important services. If you want to recover your email, log in to a bank, or prove your identity - you'll probably need to receive a call or SMS. If an attacker can take over your phone number, they're one step closer to taking over your accounts.

I keep saying "your phone number", but that's a clever lie. The phone number does not belong to you. It belongs to the network operator and they define which SIM the number points to.

This means a suitably authorised person at the telco can point "your" number to a new SIM card. That's helpful if you've lost your SIM but bad if an attacker wants to divert your number.

What can you do to stop this attack? Nothing.

Oh, you can have a strong and unique password on your account, and you can hope your telco uses TOTP and PassKeys. But it turns out that it is possible to bribe telco employees for the low, low price of US$1000.

If your security rests on a phone number, you've effectively outsourced your security to the most bribeable manager employed by your telco.

Now, I said there's nothing you can do. That isn't quite true. You can attempt to pen-test yourself.

Go to your phone company's account. Set a long password and complex password. Change your mother's maiden name to HK2BY@]'PU,:!VQ;}baTj. Turn on every security measure you can find. Call the phone company from a different phone and explain that you lost your phone and want a new SIM card. If they ask for your mother's maiden name, say "Oh, I set it to a long stream of gibberish". If they ask where to send the SIM, give a trusted friend's address. If your phone company is negligent and send out a new SIM on the basis of poor verification, then you should move your number to a more reputable provider.

It's good fun to try and social-engineer a call-centre worker for your own details. But it's probably illegal to try and bribe someone to hijack yourself.

Anyway, please try to remove your phone number as a critical lynchpin in your security regime.

Then, I remembered my ancient GSM knowledge. All mobile networks need an APN - Access Point Name - in order to connect to data services. Tucked at the bottom of the SIM settings screen is the "Access point names" option. I tapped on it, and got this unfriendly error message:

THIS IS A LIE! What it really means is that the phone doesn't have an APN listed for this specific SIM.

If you click on the + button in the top corner, you'll get to a screen where you can add your APN details manually. You'll need to get these from your mobile operator. But that's not quite all! In order to save the APN, you need to tap the ⋮ button and select "Save":

But that's not all! Once you return to the APN settings page, you will need to tap the APN to activate it.

Once I did that, my eSIM happily connected to data services.

I find dual-SIM phones handy. I have a disposable number which I give out to people who don't need my main number. And when I go abroad, it's useful to have a local SIM. When I'm at home, I like my 2nd SIM to be used as a backup in case I'm somewhere with no signal on my primary line.

So, what's the cheapest eSIM in the UK?

I think it is Spusu - an MVNO on the EE network. 1GB, Unlimited Minutes, Unlimited SMS for... £2.90 per month!

Not bad! It offers 5G, VoLTE, WiFi Calling and EU roaming. If you spend most of your day on WiFi, it's a great offer. The contract is flexible, so you can cancel it at any time.

There are a few others to consider.

Lyca - another EE MVNO - have a special offer of £1.29 per month but that's only for the first 3 months. After that it jumps to £5.90. It should be possible to cancel after the first few months, but that's a bit of hassle.

GiffGaff are an O2 MVNO. They offer a free SIM, which you can convert to an eSIM. That will get you a number which supports incoming calls and texts - but you won't be able to make calls, send texts, or use data. Their cheapest monthly plan is £6. Or you can go pure PAYG and pay 25p/min for calls, 10p per text, and 25p per MB. Ouch!

Three will also give you a free eSIM. At PAYG rates, you'll pay 35p/min, 15p/text, 10p/MB.

If you want a data-only backup eSIM, I think the cheapest is £6.50 for 30 days with 3GB from Nomad. It is designed for tourists - and will roam onto all the major UK networks. No calls or texts, but handy if you need emergency data.

Those are the cheapest deals I could find. If you think you know of something cheaper - shove a link in the comments.

I started to panic. All my apes money gone!

No. Wait. The other thing. I knew it was a scam from the moment "James from your bank's fraud team" started his patter.

You see, I have multiple phone numbers. And "James" called me on a number which isn't tied to my bank. So I strung him along for half an hour or so pretending to move my money into a safe account, taking ages to wait for an SMS confirmation code, accidentally reading out the wrong one, before cursing him and his lineage even unto the seventh generation. He, in return, introduced me to a whole new range of swearwords from his native tongue and hung up on me. Charming!

Here's how it works, and how you can use this trick.

The easiest way is to get a dual SIM phone. I have my main SIM which holds my primary phone number. That's the number used by my family, my banks, and anyone vaguely trustworthy. My second SIM contains a free disposable PAYG SIM.

That phone number gets given out to retailers, couriers, Gumtree & Freecycle users, pizza delivery, and anyone else who doesn't need my number permanently.

My Android phone tells me which line is being called. And once I start getting too much spam to that number I throw the SIM away and get a new one with a new number.

If you have an eSIM, you can do the same thing. Find a cheap eSIM provider, sign up to a PAYG or monthly plan, then ditch the number whenever you like.

Or, you can set up a SIP calling plan. Install an app and have calls automatically routed to you.

About a dozen years ago, I worked with a UK mobile network to develop "disposable" phone numbers. The idea was that we would partner with, say, a dating app and generate a new phone number for you. Your date could call and text you without you having to reveal your real number. If they turned out to be a jerk, you could revoke the phone number immediately.

The same tech could work for hiring a plumber, getting a takeaway, or a hundred different use cases. The plan was to have an app which displayed a push-notification telling you which number was being called - so you knew if it was from your temporary lover or the person picking up your old sofa.

Sadly, the demo never went anywhere. It's a pity. I'd love to have a SIM with multiple disposable numbers.

But, for now, give out your temporary number to people who don't need a way to permanently contact you. Better safe than sorry!

Halfway through, he says:

When the first generation [of iPhone] came out I offered the view, based on my experience of releases and refinements in this field, that iPhone the Third would be The One. I still believe this to be true. Any wishlist for hardware and software improvements in v3.0 would be bound to hope for – nay demand – the following:

So, what did St Stephen of Fry wish for? And can 2023 iPhones and Android match His expectations?

Fry's Wishlist

1. Cut and paste. I mean come on!!

Yes! Inexplicably this was a Hard Problem™ for multiple devices. Even Windows Phone 7 launched without such basic text editing. The iPhone eventually got this in 2009.

2. iPhone version of Safari to be Flash capable.

No! In 2010, Steve Jobs published his "Thoughts On Flash" letter. He (correctly) described all the problems with Flash and why it would never be suitable for the iPhone.

You may not remember, but Flash was ubiquitous at the time. Symbian phones had (rudimentary) Flash players, as did early Android phones. That wasn't enough to save the publication format. Nor was there enough consumer pressure to force Apple into supporting it.

3. Video recording: iPhone should be like a Flip

Yes. It may surprise you to learn that the original iPhone couldn't record video! Nearly every cameraphone on the market could. But not iOS.

4. Upgrade of camera (xenon flash, higher res)

Yes. Again, the original iPhone had a 2MP camera and no flash - compared to the contemporary Nokia N95 which had a 5MP sensor, Carl Zeiss lens, and a flash. Nowadays the iPhone has more cameras on it than seems possible.

5. Front facing video camera for 3G video calls

Yes and no. Again, the first few iPhones had no FFC. It wasn't until 2010's iPhone 4 that it got the ability to do video calls.

But! Only via Facetime. I don't think the iPhone has ever supported the GSM specification for carrier video calling. To be fair, mobile networks repeatedly shat the bed in terms of pricing their calling options, so repeatedly had their lunch stolen by "Over The Top" services like Facetime and WhatsApp.

6. MMS

Ish? Because the aforementioned carriers decided to price MMS as a premium product, most users turned to WhatsApp or similar. But, as Fry predicted, iOS 3 came with MMS.

7. User file management capabilities

Steve Jobs suggested that users didn't understand filesystems. And, therefore, the app should manage its specific files. That's a design decision which iOS still embodies. While there are now some limited ways to manage files, you're mostly at the mercy of the individual apps.

Of course, in a self-fulfilling-prophecy, people who grew up with an iPhone don't understand how file systems work.

Android, of course, doesn't give a shit at will happily let apps crap all over the filesystem.

8. Bluetooth that is worthy of the name. File transfers between different phones and platforms is a minimum requirement.

Hahaha! No. In 2013, iOS 7 introduced AirDrop which made it possible to transfer large files quickly between iOS devices and other Mac devices. But there's no way to send Bluetooth files to the filthy scum who use Android. Ewww!

9. A memory card slot.

No. And fuck you for asking! If you fill up your device, just buy a new one!!!

To be fair, the latest iPhones do offer a terabyte of storage. And, nowadays, it is getting rarer to find an Android which will take a MicroSD card.

10. AM/FM radio. (Mobile TV too, why not?)

What, are you some kind of Communist who wants to listen to music for free?!?! Just buy your songs from iTunes like a normal person.

Although there were adapters for radio signals there was never any native support for free-to-air radio. Several Android devices support AM/FM and use a standard headphone cable as an antenna.

As for TV? There is a standard for mobile broadcast called DVB-H. But it was only ever supported by a few Nokia phones and never any Android devices.

11. Better (and removable) battery.

Better? Yes? Removable? Again, fuck you for asking. Buy a new phone or pay for an expensive replacement.

12. Built in projector (this prolly won’t come till V4, but you never know)

I love the idea of iPhone users having a high-intensity light source with which to dazzle people! Sadly, this technology never came to iPhone. There are a few Android devices with built-in projectors but it still remains a niche bit of tech. There are too many compromises around picture quality, power consumption, and heat to make it worthwhile.

13. Customisable glossary for Apple’s predictive text input system. BlackBerry has a superb autotext that allows BB units still to outperform iPhone when it comes to input.

Yes, eventually. Early iPhones let you add custom text shortcuts albeit with some truly atrocious hacks.

14. Email to be widescreen capable.

It is bizarre that early iPhones didn't let you use landscape orientation in some key apps. Thankfully, this is now possible. INNOVATION!

15. Attachable proprietary or third party peripherals: keyboard, projector (if not built in see wish 12), printer etc. Maybe not necessary if iPhone implementation of Bluetooth gets the kick up the arse it needs.

*sigh* Apple's proprietary Lightning port and strict licencing programme means that there are some peripherals. It isn't like Android where you can shove in an OTG cable and use basically any USB device.

Coda

After his main list, Fry says:

I would add to that list three demands that are more to do with the way Apple and the network companies limit the iPhone’s power.

Oh, this should be good…!

1. Jailbreaking to be tolerated – encouraged, even

I hear Jobs spinning in his grave just thinking about it. Those who violate the holy sanctity of the iPhone must be cast out!

To be fair, the main reason for jailbreaking back in 2008 was to enable 3rd party app stores. It will be interesting to see if recent anticompetitive investigations will reignite this debate.

Also of interest is the way that Apple adopted some of the customisations released by the jailbreak community.

2. Unlocking not to be hobbled by iTunes

Back in 2009, I was frustrated that iTunes was needed to set up an iPhone. Nowadays, you don't need a separate computer and unlocking is handled remotely.

3. Apps designers to be freer to innovate yet further.

Well, yes and no. There are lots of interesting apps. But if designers are too innovative, or not socially conservative enough, their apps won't get released.

Again, this is an excellent reason to require Apple to allow alternative app stores.

Verdict

Overall, Stephen Fry did a good job of predicting what Steve Jobs would eventually launch.

It's interesting to remember that it wasn't obvious that the iPhone would succeed. It launched without features which the rest of the industry had decided were essential, but which regular customers didn't seem to care for.

Would I love to see an iPhone with a projector, 3rd party app store, and a built-in TV tuner which can save video to an SD card, while I use my USB keyboard to shuffle files on the filesystem? Sure! But that's what Android is for.

Most modern smartphones are too expensive for people to purchase outright. At the most extreme end, the iPhone 14 Pro Max costs £1,200⁰. So a typical customer elects to pay £50 per month for 24 months.

The customer gets a new phone for a reasonable monthly figure. The phone seller gets a regular monthly payment which helps with their financial forecasting and cashflow.

But the seller has a problem. They have, effectively, loaned over a grand to the customer. And they've secured it against a rapidly depreciating asset which is easily stolen or broken. Most sellers don't offer different loan rates to different people. For a traditional loan, someone with poor credit might pay a higher %age than someone with a better credit rating. But, most sellers just give you a straight approve / deny for their loan¹.

This is where the Collateralised Debt Obligation comes in. You may remember CDOs from the Great Financial Crisis. They're fairly simple to understand. I am a high risk borrower and you are a low risk borrower - mix our loans together and you've got a medium risk debt.

Repeat that over thousands of phone loans. The seller has a pool of mixed risk loans which they can sell in bulk.

Here's a toy example - these figures are plucked out of thin air for illustrative purposes.

• Buy 1,000 phones wholesale for £800 each.
• Loan each customer £1,200 over 24 months to purchase the phone.
• Sell the £1,200,000 debt for £900,000.
• Immediate profit of £100,000.
• Every month, send the £50 from each customer to the group which now owns the debt.
• If fewer than 25% of the customers are bad debtors, the debt-owner still makes a profit.

Of course, it's a lot more complicated than that. And the margins are much slimmer. And there are various insurances, costs of chasing debt, ability to cut off service, etc. But hopefully you get the idea.

What does this mean for you?

If you've got a good credit rating, you're probably better off taking a personal loan to buy the expensive phone you lust over.

If you've got a bad credit rating, you're probably paying a lower rate than you would from a personal loan. But you might be better off saving up or buying a cheaper device.

Will this all come crashing down like the mortgage CDOs of yesteryear? Probably not. Phones are a lot cheaper than houses. For now...

I'm going to go with a cautious "no - not quite". Although there are several proxies which get you part of the way there.

Here's a link to a telephone number "call me!" - the HTML is:

<a href="tel:+441234815259">call me!</a>

You can use tel: in just the same way you'd use http: or mailto:. It tells the User Agent to open the correct program to deal with a task - either a web-browser, email client, or - in this case - the telephone dialler.

But what happens if the user is on a desktop browser? Or using a tablet computer? Or on their smart TV? Usually an error message about how the device doesn't understand the link.

So, is there a way to use feature detection to only show a tel: to devices which can handle it?

User Agent Sniffing

This practice has been discredited for over a decade. UA Strings tend to lie. And, even when they don't lie, they're not very precise.

You could use this to discover if someone is running Android - but that doesn't tell you if it's a phone, tablet, TV, or VR headset.

NetworkInformation type

The navigator object contains network information. That should tell you if the device is on a 2G/3G/4G/5G connection.

Of course, your tablet also uses those connections. And your phone might be on WiFi.

Other properties

It is possible to detect if a device is multi-touch, has a battery, is a mobile device, can vibrate, etc.

All of which, taken together, might indicate that the device is a phone. But it is far from certain.

A Big Database Of Products

Companies like 51Degrees will sell you access to their database - which includes reporting whether a specific device supports phone calls. As will DeviceAtlas.

There used to be an Open Source database called WURFL - but ScientiaMobile closed down open access to it.

To be fair, 51Degrees have a generous free tier - but it is a little depressing that this sort of feature detection is locked in a proprietary product.

If you have any ideas how to solve this please give me a call!

Tawanda Nyahuye👨‍💻

@towernter

How to end a frontend developer's career pic.x.com/AYsI0pghh5

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I imagine that this (concept) device would probably just put the browser only on one row / column. Probably sensible, but utterly BORING!

Let's imagine a few bonkers devices. Here's a daft concept phone with a punch-hole camera cutting out its screen.

What would text scrolling look like on that? Well, it's pretty easy to mock up!

The code to do this is pretty damn simple!

First, set a function to trigger whenever the body is scrolled. Then shove a <div> in at the top.

<body onscroll="moveCircle()">
  <div id="tl"></div>
  <p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet...

Next, draw a shape-outside of a circle. This will wrap the text around a quarter circle.

#tl {
  shape-outside: circle(20% at 0px 0px);
  width: 10em;
  height: 100%;
  float: left;
}

Finally, the Javascript which runs whenever the page is scrolled. It moves the circle so its centre stays in the top-left of the physical screen.

function moveCircle() { 
   document.getElementById("tl").style.shapeOutside = "circle(20% at 0px " + window.pageYOffset + "px)"; 
}

That's it!

What if your phone's notch was MASSIVE and you wanted to scroll text around it?

Again, this uses shape-outside but this time feeding it a polygon:

document.getElementById("tl").style.shapeOutside =
    "polygon(0 " + (150 + window.pageYOffset) + "px, 100px " + 
            (150 + window.pageYOffset) + "px, 100px " + (300 + window.pageYOffset) + "px)"; 

CNN once posited that the smartphone of the future could be triangluar

What would it be like to read text on such a device?

Hell. it would be hell.

OK, let's go utterly ridiculous. What if that L-shaped phone could open and close while you were reading and scrolling? It'd look something like this:

Weird, right?

Imagine you're on DEEP SPACE NINE where all the Cardassian screens are oval shaped.

With a bit of bashing about with polygons, you can sort-of make that happen.

I'm not even going to give the iCarly Pear Phone a go!

OMG! THESE ARE ALL HORRIBLE!

Yes. We're mostly used to text filling a rectangular space. And it is rare that the material we read on changes shape.

But it doesn't have to be that way. The technology is here to make non-rectangular screens a reality. There are plenty of smart-watches with circular faces - but we can go so far beyond that.

There's an excellent paper called "Investigating Text Legibility on Non-Rectangular Displays" which looks at the usability of weirdly-shaped displays. I hope it becomes required reading if / when screens start getting interesting again.

Bonus Video

Here's a video talking about how GUIs will adapt to non-rectangular displays.

The pitch was simple. "As a woman on a dating site, I don't want to give my phone number out to strange blokes in case they don't like it when I eventually reject them."

The idea was that we'd partner with a dating service and, for the low price of £X per month, give users a temporary phone number. Calls and texts to that number would be routed to the user's regular phone number. At any time, the user could hit a button and the temp number would be deleted. Bang! And the harasser has gone!

The model also extended to pizza delivery companies, couriers, taxi firms, plumbers etc. There's a whole raft of people you might not feel comfortable knowing your real number - so buy a disposable one from us and discard it if anyone starts being weird with you.

This has now become mainstream in the tech world with Apple's Hide My Email - a unique email address which can be deleted at will.

There were some technical challenges involved in the phone number idea. It would have meant routing a user's calls and texts in such a way that their Caller ID number was spoofed when connecting to someone who'd previously called or texted the temp number. Not insurmountable - but hard to explain to users. "Yes, if this guy texts you, you can text him back from a temp number."

There was also a small risk of fraud and abuse from people getting temporary numbers. Again, we could probably have developed something to unmask them if law enforcement required it.

And, there was a significant chance of numbers being recycled. I'm sure most of us have had the experience of someone calling for the last person to have our phone number.

Rather more significantly - dating sites hated the idea. It implied that all the men on their sites were horrible bastards who couldn't be trusted. It sent a signal that women were under threat from their users, and that wasn't good for business. There was, fairly, some pushback that this was victim blaming. It shouldn't be a user's responsibility to take technological measures to avoid harassment.

But, what finally stopped the idea was the prevalence of dual-SIM phones and cheap / free PAYG SIMs. It's easy to grab a cheap SIM for a couple of weeks and bin it when you're done. If you only use it for chatting with dates, you can dispose of it whenever you like. And if you like the guy, you can give them your "new" number.

I'd still like to be able to programmatically change my SIM's number. I'm sure Apple's eSIM probably lets you do something similar. But, for now, I can just order a free SIM and shove it in my second slot.

Oh well, plenty of other ideas left to change the world.

This is something I predicted 7 years ago!

Qi - the wireless charging standard - is excellent. Put your phone down on a mat, or in a cradle, and it starts charging. Lovely! But there's a problem. You can't pick up your phone while it's charging. How many times have you lain on the sofa, cord tethered twixt phone and wall, while you watch cat videos and charge?

After a year of use, I'm convinced Magnetic Charging Cables are the future!

At the moment, you need to fill your USB socket with a small dongle in order to use them - but image if phones came with build-in magnetic charging zones.

Here are the main advantages:

• Use your phone while charging. This is the big one. I can be sprawled on the sofa playing a game and still charge. Try doing that with Qi!
• Less risk of damage. Stand up and walk away and the magnet decouples. Do that with a plugged in USB cable and you risk damaging either the port or plug.
• No data exfiltration. A pure charging cable doesn't need a USB Condom.
• A connection is guaranteed. I sometimes don't plug in a USB cable all the way. The magnets snap together which ensures connectivity.

There are, of course, a few downsides.

• No real standard yet. There are a couple of magnetic charging port designs which are incompatible with each other.
• Magnets are magnetic. That means they pick up stray paper-clips and other cruft. That can short out cables or cause other damage.
• Expensive. USB cables are ten-a-penny. Magnetic cables are more expensive.
• Lack of power. USB-C can deliver huge amounts of power very quickly. Magnetic chargers seem to go up to 3 amp.

I wouldn't go back to plain USB sockets for small gadgets. I'm a convert to magnetic charging. And I hope the world eventually comes round to the same opinion!

People used to pay-per-minute for telephone calls. Some numbers were "zero-rated". That is, if you called them you wouldn't be charged. At first⁰ it was calls to the emergency services which were free. Businesses and other organisations realised that it was good customer service to provide a free-to-call number. Generally speaking, this means that the called-party pays the phone company for incoming call rather than the caller paying¹. Thus 0800² numbers were born.

Why don't we have something similar for the mobile web? Lots of people pay per MB for data - or have limited data caps. Wouldn't it be nice if sites could say "don't charge the user for this - charge our site instead!"?

Clearly, what's needed is a new HTTP Header. Something like x-no-data-charges.

Simples‽

We Already Have This

Last year, I had a small part to play in the scheme to zero-rate data for UK mobiles accessing the NHS websites:

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

You can now access most NHS services from your mobile, with no data charges.
In awe of the team who pulled this together very quickly.
gov.uk/government/new…gov.uk
Mobile networks remove data charges for online NHS coronavirus advice
Free access to online NHS services will be available for as long as coronavirus (COVID-19) remains widespread in the UK.

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Later, this was extended to several important charities.

In these cases, the mobile networks got together and agreed to waive the charges. The sites didn't need to do any special configurations at their end³.

Many years ago, when Facebook still pretended that it cared about bringing free Internet to the developing world, it offered poor countries free access to Facebook. And maybe a few other sites.

I tried to get this blog added to the free programme - but nothing ever came of it.

Terence Eden is on Mastodon

@edent

Does anyone know how I get my site zero-rated on @internet_org?

---

Similarly, lots of mobile networks in the UK will give you UNLIMITED NETFLIX which doesn't eat into your regular data cap. How does a Netflix competitor get on to that deal? Pay up! Do big deals with big companies. Small fry need not apply.

There are problems with this.

Here's what happened when Wikipedia and Facebook were made free-to-browse in Angola:

Wikimedia and Facebook have given Angolans free access to their websites, but not to the rest of the internet. So, naturally, Angolans have started hiding pirated movies and music in Wikipedia articles and linking to them on closed Facebook groups, creating a totally free and clandestine file sharing network in a country where mobile internet data is extremely expensive.

Motherboard - "Angola’s Wikipedia Pirates Are Exposing the Problems With Digital Colonialism"

Could this happen here?

Imagine that *.NHS.uk was zero-rated for mobile users. Is there a tiny cottage hospital running an outdated webserver somewhere on the NHS estate? I'll bet there is⁴. How long before pirates would start abusing that service? Sure, the infosec teams would shut it down quickly. But that's a hassle.

What about the embedded content on a page? No one hosts their own videos. So do we have to zero-rate YouTube? What about the CDNs serving all the CSS and JavaScript?

Who pays?

What does it realistically cost to deliver a MB of data? Over a satellite phone, about US$245 for 100MB. No webmaster wants to pay that!

How would you even invoice for this properly? It's hard⁵ to abuse the phone network so much that you'd bankrupt an 0800 number. But I'm sure sender-pays-data would be abused the instant it was turned on.

Is this a good idea?

No. But sometimes it's fun to run with an idea to see how awful it is.

Here's the best data deals that I could find. Stick them in your 2nd SIM slot, use them as broadband backup, or shove in a dongle and attach to a Raspberry Pi.

If you want the cheapest data - it's got to be EE. Less than a quarter of the price-per-GB than Three.

For the cheapest per-month equivalent - there's nothing between Three or Vodafone. Just pick whoever gives you best coverage.

Worth also checking whether the network you choose supports 5G on their pre-paid SIMS. Same for roaming. Some do, some don't - it's not always clear from their websites.

I'm not sure if I can physically use 120GB in a year given that I'm mostly WFH. So I think I might give Vodafone a go.

If you've spotted any better deals - please let me know in the comments below.

So I switched to a £6/mo deal. That got me unlimited calls / texts and 2GB data. I figured that would be a sensible compromise. But, after a month, it became clear that I wasn't likely to make any use of that data. No going out for me!

So I switched again to a different provider. Same price - £6 - but less data. Again, after a couple of months, I realised that I wasn't using any data and barely any phone calls. So I switched to PAYG, loaded up a small bit of credit to see how much I'd use.

I also set up SIP. I paid a tenner for some calling credit. I can now call landlines at a cheaper rate than my mobile provider!

And, it has been... fine. In the last year, I've sent half a dozen texts. Mostly free spam reports. And a couple to a friend who doesn't use a smartphone. A little bit of data when I couldn't find WiFi when out-and-about. That's it.

Total spend in the last 12 months

July 2020: £6 contract. Sept 2020: £6 PAYG bundle Oct 2020: £6 PAYG bundle Nov 2020: £10 SIP Mar 2021: £10 PAYG credit

Thirty-eight quid a year. I remember when I used to spend that per month!

I've got about £3 credit left on my PAYG SIM and £6 on my SIP account. That should last me another couple of months.

As the world opens up again, I'm wondering how / if I'll change this. I don't need cellular voice / text - but I still want data when out of WiFi coverage.

My current provider, GiffGaff, charges 10p per MB, or £6/mo for 500MB, or £10 for 9GB. With other providers, it looks like the £6-£10 range gets about 2GB-15GB. Vectone offer 1GB for £3, and there is even a SIM which has 250MB free each month.

So I guess I now have some options:

1. Stick with PAYG data. And try not to use more than 60MB when out of the house. Probably impossible - even given the ubiquity of WiFi.
2. Use RWG's free 250MB per month. Might be tight.
3. Cough up a few quid per month and restrict myself to a couple of hundred MB. I think this should be doable - but might require extra spending if I get stuck somewhere boring.
4. Find a new provider with a more generous allowance and resign myself to paying a lot more than I'm used to.

So, gentle reader, which would you choose?

If my number is 07700 900 123 I get calls from 07700 900 124 or 07700 900 456

Here's my working theory on why spammers do this. Americans.

In the UK, there's a separate "area code" for mobile phones. If a number starts 07 then it is mobile (it's a bit more complicated than that).

In the USA, there's no cellular prefix. If you buy a SIM card in Las Vegas, you'll probably get a 702 number - at least, I did when I last visited.

Some of the area codes in the USA cover tiny geographic areas.

Spammers know this. They bet that if they call +1-555-867-5309 from +1-555-867-5409 the person will believe the spammer is local to them. Possibly even a neighbour. It is a weak form of social engineering attack. You're more likely to trust someone local than a distant stranger.

In the UK this doesn't work. Not because we don't trust our neighbours, but because our mobile numbers aren't tied to a specific geography.

Cultural hegemony can be an effective anti-shibboleth!

Recently, I've found another free provider of data, with an intriguing price-plan.

RWG Mobile are a Welsh MVNO who use EE as their backhaul. As well as the usual high-end plans, they also have this at the lower end.

Yup! A free SIM with 50 UK minutes / SMS included. Think about how much calling and texting you do each month. For me, the majority is over IP using Signal or Skype. I do less than an hour per month on hold to old-fashioned landline companies. My data usage is minimal at the moment - I'm on WiFi while I'm WFH, and most trains and shops have free WiFi too.

Could I survive on only 250MB? Probably! Their £1 per month (!!) price plan takes that up to half a gig. For comparison, my GiffGaff SIM costs £6 for the same amount of data (albeit unlimited calls).

I ordered a free SIM - it came with a letter in Welsh and English - popped the SIM into my 2nd slot and... it works! I could make calls to free phone numbers straight away, but had to email them to activate it for data.

I have crap EE coverage where I am, but it has proved useful when out and about. As a backup SIM, it's perfect. Even at £1 per month, it's probably worth having just in case you find yourself somewhere where only EE has coverage.

Please don't abuse this service - they're a small company trying something innovative.

But this really does open up mobile to so many more people. You can now get a cheap, no-name Android device for under £50 and a year of basic service for £12. Living in the future is amazing.

This was created with Amazon Polly which is free for casual use. I was pretty impressed with the voice quality. Although there are limits to how well you can control the speed and intonation.

While there are a number of accents available, there are only a small number of distinct voices in British English.

Type your text, choose your voice, listen in the browser, then download the audio.

So I've set up a Bananaphone. When people ring me, they get 30 seconds of my favourite song. Then the call is passed to me. The theory being that my friends get to enjoy a short ditty but con artists are likely to hang up before the call connects to me.

As detailed in last year's blog, I've set my Android phone up to make and receive SIP calls. I use the SipGate service which, as well as being cheap, has a nifty API.

It's a pretty simple service to set up. Once you've signed up and activated the developer package, set up a webhook:

Give it a URL which spits out this bit of XML:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<Response>
   <Play>
      <Url>https://example.com/banana.wav</Url>
   </Play>
</Response>

There are a bunch of examples in a variety of language.

The WAV file has some specific format requirements. Specifically, it needs to be an 8kHz 16bit PCM WAV file.

And... that's it! It's a bit early to say whether it has eliminated spammers (or turned off legitimate callers). I might go a bit further and change this to a recording which says "This call is protected by spam guard. Press 1 to be connected." But this is a quick, easy, and fun solution.