Phone spam has all but killed phones. Pervasive surveillance has done the rest.<p>Maybe not for everyone. Yet.<p>But where a phone was for a time a liberating device, it's become what many of its early (and I'm talking about late 19c and early 20c critics said, not late 20/early 21) critics claimed: an insistant, rude, inconsiderate, and noxious nuisance.<p>A phone can ring at any time, from a call initiated anywhere in the world. Low (or zero) costs mean the caller has very little reason <i>not</i> to call, and even a very slight probability of a positive financial return can support all measure of spam.<p>The fact that carrying a phone subjects you to sub-minute location tracking, puts an always-on microphone in your pocket, and leaks your identity, location, habits, and interests to the highest bidder (or marginally competent hacker) makes <i>that</i> a non-starter.<p>For the past several years, I've simply <i>not</i> carried a phone when I could possibly manage to, and the liberation is tremendous. (The trauma of having been on-call for years may or may not have contributed to my intense distaste for the devices.)<p>There are other options -- virtually <i>any</i> modern electronic kit has multiple messaging capabilities, from email to IRC to various messaging applications to full VOIP and voice/video messaging. Carrying a non-phone Android tablet affords some utility without the tremendous disutilities of a phone.<p>But, and this speaks to recent pain, the device (a Samsung Tab A 9.7" WiFi-only) is itself locked down -- not rootable, bootloader locked, and so far as I can tell, no CyanogenMod images available for it. I'd bought it whilst travelling under some duress, as an affordable and, so far as I could tell, least-bad option.<p>But without the ability to actually control the system, I'm still subject to spam, crud, poor management tools (simply being able to allocate and manage storage rationally appears beyonds its meagre capabilities), etc.<p>What Google are offering is very little, very late. And the fact that other telcos are failing to step up and address the massive disutilities of their projects is another immense failing of the market. Realising these are the same unspeakable idiots who'll be shoving Internet of Shit devices down our every orifice makes me cry for the future.