I have been thinking about going with JMP chat and if I do that's probably what I would do just port my current number to them so that I don't lose it since that's my primary number and I don't really want to deal with getting a new one and giving it out to everybody.
Depends on country. In the United States, you might look at something like the T-Mobile Connect prepaid plan and the Nokia 225 4G. And yes, prepaid numbers absolutely do work for app registrations. I've been on prepaid for years and had no issues. It's voice over IP numbers that have problems.
You really shouldn't be using a personal device for work purposes or a work device for personal purposes. So I would try to get your job to provide you a device to do work related stuff on rather than doing it yourself. Also, I ended up switching banks, not because my bank app didn't run, but primarily because my bank would not allow me to do everything from the website that I could do in the app. And I do not want any Google Play apps at all on my device. And so I ended up switching banks for that purpose to one where I could use the online website for everything.
I have been using lineage with No play services since like 2019 and while it does take a little bit of getting used to, once you are comfortable with it, it's just as easy. The big things you won't get are notifications for most apps since most rely on Google Play Services for notifications. Some apps will refuse to run because of not having the Google Play Services for integrity checks. That mainly applies to banks and stuff, so you might have to either switch banks or use the mobile website instead of the bank app. The ride-sharing apps such as Uber and Lyft do not work, but you can get an Uber through their website, at least for now. Although if that ever goes away, that could cause problems. If you use open streetmaps OSMAnd, instead of another mapping application, you won't be able to do many addresses. So you'll need something such as gps-coordinates.net to convert addresses to lat/long for use in OSMAnd.
Other than what I've mentioned above, there's not really a huge difference.
Also, if you do use OSMAnd, please, please, please contribute addresses. When you go to a place, just add a point of interest to the map and add its address and stuff. And that would be super damn helpful. A lot of businesses are shown, but what's not shown is a lot of the residential addresses. So, like, going and mapping your neighborhood with its addresses would be really helpful. Or nearby neighborhoods, etc.
Surprise Santa had time to stop for that. But talk about one lucky guy.
I think what we will get out of all this virtual reality research is good augmented reality devices because being able to look at something and pull up information on that thing or instructions on how to use it, etc. would be damn useful. I think I've heard of companies using AR and VR for training purposes, like how to work machines in a factory, etc. before you actually start using them.
I suspect that it's one of those things that will happen at some point in the future, but we just don't have the technology and equipment ready for it just yet. I figure it's similar to AI research in like 2007 when they were able to put the computer on Jeopardy and have it compete against the contestants. It worked, but it wasn't ready for mainstream usage at the time.
I'm sorry you had to go through this but only ever by devices from the manufacturer and make sure that you buy them at full price and that they are not tied to a carrier when you buy them and you'll be all right.
If you have to switch, give Thunder a try. It is a very well put together app. And I enjoy it, and you might as well.
Two things either don't use their service or you could get your own domain and then set up a catch-all so that you can create as many aliases as you want with your own domain. So like kroger@example.com, walmart@example.com, etc.
I'm really hoping now that they have an official app. It will help the growth some. You can tell it's very early days for it, but I think it has a lot of potential.
Even if it's more expensive, I will probably go with JMP because it's open source and open source to me is a hill I am willing to die on. I do absolutely everything I possibly can to use only open source software at any time that it is feasibly possible to do so.