After losing Android device in a bike ride, I needed to have my SIM card back and have a running cell phone, so that people can reach me. I didn’t have time to wait for a smartphone to be delivered in 3 days, so I found a smartphone in my used devices box. It was Samsung Galaxy Ace 2011 with Android 2.3.6.

Most of the software that is preinstalled on the device is unusable because either company/developer stopped supporting the software (Google News) or requires higher security ciphers so fails (Maps, Play Store).

Software such as Calendar, Contacts, Clock, Memo, Messages work as expected.

Installing software also is not straight forward. I have had tried installing Firefox, WhatsApp or Signal. Of course, I found APKs from archive websites, but I had no chance to run any of them.

For instance WhatsApp: The software that makes life easier. Without it, people started to call me directly. There were no way that they thought that they can send me SMS instead asking me to download WhatsApp or some other social media platform. This is not only happening to WhatsApp but also Signal, Tor or any kind of tool.

I need to stress out we are living in a modern internet age. We are connected with devices together and we perform complex tasks such as informing our loved ones that we are safe and healthy. This is impossible to do with security flawed cipher suites. Also, the device is becoming older and older can not compute timely manner, so that would result bad user experience on video streaming platforms. Or worst, the device and its operating system is full of flawed…

To write something to the future of the web, openness in the web was the key to success of the 2000’s web. Then this was failed with the smartphone era. To not repeat this again, try to use open technologies and protocols. However, security is not an easy task to have open-only technology.