I still prefer a physical SIM for my main cell plan, but when travelling to other countries it is so amazing to be able to just download an eSIM and avoid roaming fees. Airalo is quite convenient, but I hear it’s getting pricey compared to other options.

Plus with dual SIM I can disable roaming on my main SIM but still receive texts for free, but use data for cheap with the local eSIM at the same time.

Disclaimer: I live in Canada which has some of the most expensive cell plans in the world. Roaming in the US is $13 CAD/day and $16 CAD/day in the rest of the world. That seems like blatant extortion to me, they can’t blame Canada’s large size for expensive roaming fees (right?). I think US plans are a lot better, and I assume European cell plans are generally even cheaper.

Edit: I prefer physical SIMs for my main plan because if my main phone is dead or broken, I can just pop the physical SIM in an old phone that I bring while travelling. Until eSIMs can be somehow transferred like that, I don’t see myself using them for my main cell plan. Just remember to set a SIM PIN so that if someone steals your phone, they can’t use your SIM card to receive 2FA texts.

Edit 2: eSIMs are generally a pain to transfer between phones. I think my cell provider lets you do it online by scanning a QR code, but I know some make you call them and read 16 digit codes over the phone. Some even charge a small fee. I dread the day where other cell phone manufacturers follow what Apple did in the US (I think?) and make eSIMs the only option.

I really like Aegis for 2FA/TOTP:

https://github.com/beemdevelopment/Aegis

Edit: also Element, a matrix client, for messaging: https://element.io/download

Edit 3: Feeder for RSS (Google Play), (F-Droid), I really like how you can extract the text of articles without ads.

Edit 4: Simon Tatham’s Puzzles, a bunch of simple puzzle games, no ads or BS (Google Play) (I think this is the right one: F-Droid). Fun fact: he created PuTTY.

Edit 2: also minidlna (apparently called ReadyMedia now) as a UPnP/DLNA server to host music and videos on your PC, then you can easily watch using VLC on a phone/computer (and any smart TV with the VLC app, probably) within the LAN. I’d be interested to hear any recommendations for how to easily access my UPnP server from outside my network from my phone. I’m sure there’s some way to do it with a VPN, but I’d rather only route the media streaming traffic through my home network, not all my phone’s traffic.

Ahhh… memories are flooding back now. I remember the screen would get distorted and change into the mini game. Agreed, it was amazing and I also can’t believe it was hidden. I miss little gems like that in older video games.

This is awesome! “The Incredible Machine” seems like it’d work great too. It was a bit awkward to control in the browser (having to bring up the keyboard a few times), but I’ll have to try their app later.

And yeah Ur-Quan Masters didn’t play very well. I figured it would be better than nothing on a long flight, though. (But who am I kidding, I always have my laptop with me anyway)

You can either use on-screen touch controls, or you can press anywhere on the screen and have the ship move to that location (while constantly firing). The on-screen touch controls do not work very well for me, but the “follow my finger” method works pretty well. I think I made it through “hard” or maybe medium with it.

It’s not ideal, you have to stop moving to stop firing and let your generator catch up if your shields took a lot of damage. But it’s fun enough as a casual game if you have a few minutes to kill. Or maybe it’s just the nostalgia that makes me enjoy it.

And you trigger sidekicks or toggle weapon firing modes by pressing the info on the right side of the screen. I assume this was added for the mobile version, I didn’t think it was clickable in the original, though I doubt I ever tried it.

Awesome, thanks! I played Sonic when I was younger, but somehow I never tried any of the others you mentioned. I’ve been meaning to try the “Final Fantasy” series forever and it never occurred to me that it would work well on a phone.