VICTORY, MY FRIENDS!!! I have painstakingly upgraded this old phone to stock OS Android 10 (having to manually incrementally update from certain versions to another), upgraded everything and FLASHED A NEW ROM! Lineage 20 running Android 13! And bonus, thanks to the angels at XDA I have got root back on AND can still use my bank app and Google Wallet and have system wide ad blocking.

I will have to spend a decent amount of time later this week configuring the launcher and display etc. My only one stupid mistake was forgetting to use whatsapp’s own service to backup messages to the cloud before doing all this; it apparently didn’t detect wifi and hasn’t done an automatic backup since the 22nd - and ye olde titanium backup can’t restore data given that the app was running off such an ancient OS.

It all sounds silly but it really is a point of extreme and irrational inertia/avoidance updating things that substantially change the UI/UX of my phone (worse still changing the phone itself). This REALLY feels like dusting out the cobwebs and making a fresh start! :)

If I can get my banking and national login apps from my home country onto this phone off my iPhone (because that’s the only thing it worked on), I’ll be singing. e: banking might be a go, although again I stupidly should’ve disabled the digital token before all this, I’ll have to sort it out in person in a few weeks. but national login is absolutely airtight, I might need to use a burner phone for the rare time I need that login thing. think mygov but on 30593095039403493094 steroids - I hate it, tbh, way too much info in one place.