Using Nexus Market on an Android Phone

The market works on a phone, and for checking an order or reading a message it is genuinely convenient. For trading serious amounts it is the weakest link in the chain, and this guide is about where the line is.

Install it

Get Tor Browser for Android from the Tor Project, either through the Play Store or by downloading the APK from torproject.org. The APK route is better, because the Play Store listing can lag behind the current release, and the store itself sees your install. Verify the file after download if you are careful about that kind of thing, or accept the small risk of the store route.

Open the app and let it build a circuit. The first load of a mirror takes the same 20 to 40 seconds as on desktop. After that, the experience is the same market, the same account, the same escrow.

What the phone adds

The phone leaks more than a desktop, and it is worth knowing where. The operating system reports screen size, battery state, and a set of device characteristics that a desktop does not. The keyboard you type with is a dictionary keyboard that watches what you type, unless you use the built-in one with predictions off. And the camera, the microphone, and the location services are all present on a device that a desktop workstation does not have to carry.

None of that is fatal for a market session. It is the difference between a room with a door and a room with a window.

The practical limits

Three rules keep phone trading sane. First, do not keep coins on the phone longer than a session. Deposit, order, confirm, withdraw, close. Second, do not type a delivery address on a touchscreen if you can paste it. Third, do not use the phone as your only device for the account. The two-factor codes and the recovery words should live on the desktop side, where you can write them down.

If you trade more than a small amount a month, the honest answer is that the phone is for checking, and the desktop is for trading. The market does not care which device you use. The rest of your setup does.

The security settings guide applies to the phone too, with one difference: the bridge option is more useful on mobile networks, where carriers block Tor more aggressively than fixed lines do.