Bitcoin Forum

I have an android phone. I am looking to install a bitcoin wallet. What are my options and which bitcoin wallet is the best one.

I only need non-custodial wallets which are decentralized.

You have a variety of choices like Blockchain wallet or BitPay. Choose one from this list: https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet?step=5&platform=android

However, i think Electrum would be your best choice.
A friendly-use client supports:
- bech32 addresses.
- Adjusted fees.
- RBF / CPFP
- Lightening network.
- Import/Export addresses.
- Watch only wallet.
And a lot of other amazing features that you won't find in any other non-custudial wallets.

First of all note that being non-custodial isn't enough. If you want your fund to be secure, you should use a open-source wallet.
For example, both trustwallet and exodus are are non-custosial (which means they give you full access to your keys). But they are not secure. Because we don't know whether the keys are stored on their server or not.

As suggested by Kavelj22 in the above post too, I recommend you to use electrum.

Warning:
Download electrum only from its official website (https://electrum.org/#home).

With trust wallet you have option to store other alts and they have a lot of feature like built in exchanges, dApps etc.

Also i am confused between BRD and Electrum. Is BRD open source too ?

We have different non custodial Wallet and custodial Wallet so it's base on you to select the one that is suitable to you, so making it so simple and easier you have to  use Google searching button, then Google will list the wallet to you and you have to install the application, But i will prefe you to use electrum but other's are there.

I agree. Electrum is the best choice for bitcoin wallets.

I would also give samourai a try  as they have an android version
.

If you are using altcoins , you can also use coinomi. It is a closed source wallet (just like all multicurrency wallets are), but it is a very old one and I use it for years, i never had problems.

Just be careful never to add lots of funds in a mobile wallet, as none of them are really safe.

Their code is available on github (https://github.com/breadwallet). But since I haven't ever used it, I can't say how secure it is.

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You should never use google for finding a wallet. If you use google, there's a probability that you download a fake wallet or malware.
Also, Binance is not a wallet. It's an exchange and they have full control over users fund.

Yeah accepted binance is a blockchain, it's a errors via fast typing, i was trying to type electrum.

If you want a decent privacy and some sort of control over your wallet and since you're a beginner, you can probably benefit from using Bitcoin wallet. And you might want to take the test on the link given by @Kavelj22 so you can see what's recommended to you.

You initially asked for a bitcoin wallet, that's the reason everyone including me is recommending you to use Electrum wallet. If you have altcoins too, you can use different wallet for altcoins like trust wallet or coinomi but still keep your bitcoin stored in electrum.

In my opinion you can use coinbase or coinomi wallet or popular android wallets like trust , Safepal these are the best BTC storage wallets for you currently and I'm also using, you can try the experience right from chplay Hey , These wallets are used by many investors about their reliability, you can rest assured.

I might assumed it's kind of typo, but you recommend coinbase as well not just binance which are not both wallet. And can't understand how binance's blockchain is connected or related as a wallet. Both requires KYC verification which probably contradicts decentralization

That's really strange that people recommending Binance or Coinbase as a wallet. This shows how much lack of knowledge we have and yet we think we are the experts of crypto.  :(

If you have more funds, i will recommend you to use a hardware wallet. You can use Ledger Nano S  or Trezor.

Download Electrum from the website and not on the Google play store. Make sure that you have "install from other sources" on your phone ticked which will allow you to install the .apk
Verify that it has not been tampered with by verfiying the hash with the keys that they have published on their website.

You cannot use hardware wallets with your phone he is asking for a wallet that is compatible with Android.

You do not own your private keys with Coinbase or Coinomo please stop advising people to use these services when it could put their funds at risk.

1- OP is asking about a bitcoin wallet for Phone and not a wallet that supports alts.
2- All your suggestion doesn't fit the op needs. At opposite, it may leads him to the wrong target as those clients are not fully decentralized and own by centralized entities like trust wallet or coinbase.
3- Try not to suggest custodial wallets for newbies. We want users to get a better knowledge by using the right client and not just following investors.

coinbase is an exchange, you won't have the private key with it. i'm not sure with coinomi but i think you still have the private key with it too, we just are not sure if they do have the copy of the private key with them, it's a close source wallet. although i have seen some users like using coinomi because you can use the wallet to trade because its a hybrid wallet with exchange inside it.

electrum is the only one that is trusted the most even with desktop wallets. it doesn't download the whole blockchain too.

Yes, elektrum is still my favorite wallet choice for android phones and elektrum is more focused on speed and simplicity, with low resource usage and advantages or disadvantages you can find on google.
and my main reason is because i have been using elektrum wallet for a long time, and so far no problem and safe for me, and for altcoins i use coinomi and both i think are good for android phone.

You can use coinomi and it is good enough to sore your bitcoin. Besides, electrum is trusted and well known wallet that you can install. But be sure to download and install it from official website.

https://electrum.org/#home

Latest version direct link: https://download.electrum.org/4.1.5/Electrum-4.1.5.0-arm64-v8a-release.apk

Googleplay link: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.electrum.electrum

Ive been using this Bitcoin wallet for years and i dont have any problems and i do always love its simplicity yet secure.

Why should not i download from google play store ? Is there any problem with it ? What's different between .APK file and the one available in google playstore ?

i never doubted electrum in this because they are really good when it comes to bitcoin storage but now surely not only bitcoin is in this but altcoins too.
for my own mobile wallet I'm now using coinbase and trust for now because this is indeed a popular list for wallets that are on mobile.
on the other hand, I feel that the security is starting to maximize now, so I use these two wallets.

You can find all the details information under the Development & Technical Discussion.

Bitcoin Forum > Bitcoin > Development & Technical Discussion > Wallet software > Bitcoin Wallet for Android (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=100.0)

Electrum android wallet is the most simplest wallet.

Does it have the same features as the desktop wallet ?

If you download the correct one from the play store, there is should be no difference between that .apk and the .apk on the Electrum website. However, Google do not perform any due diligence about what gets listed on the play store, and frequently host scam wallets and malicious clones, which look very similar to the real thing and unsuspecting users download, use, and then lose all their coins. You are far safer downloading the .apk from the Electrum website, verifying it against ThomasV's +/- SomberNight's public keys, and then transferring that verified .apk to your phone for installation.

Not quite. Most notably, it does not have coin control, which is a real drawback to using it. If you only use each address in your wallet once you can still freeze addresses which gives you a workaround, but that is far from perfect.

besides https://electrum.org/#home i also recommend https://bluewallet.io/ for saving your bitcoin....so far i haven't had any problems using these two btc wallets.  i don't really recommend using a multi-coin wallet because the security is lower than a single coin wallet.

^ Definitely right, I use before a Coinomi wallet which is a multi-coin wallet. Upon making a transaction, I can't able to modify the fee or based on the mempool space, it had always a high amount of fees compared to when you are using Electrum wallet which is it has a simple feature that we can easily use. For all free BTC android wallet apps, Electrum is the best choice, you can even use this as your cold storage wallet using an offline device, a device that is never connected to the internet. Nevertheless, as long as there is a chance that you can avoid using BTC wallet from the app just do it because our phone is prone to hack that potentially we will get hack too.

There are copycats on the Google Playstore that have not been removed or monitored by Google itself. That's why if you're going to download an APK, make sure that you're getting it from the official website. They have their own link on their website and that's to help you avoid downloading the fake ones. Many have been victimized by those fake wallet apps because they clearly look similar to the official one and that's why if you're going to download through the play store, be careful and do it with diligence.

I can only recommend you 3 wallets :
- Trust Wallet
- Electrum Wallet
- Coin Base

i used Trust Wallet right now, because it's easier and simple looking UI made me choose this wallet. And i already saving some coins in that wallet too

I open the electurm website and then click on the Play store link and it directly took me to the right wallet. Also i saw high number of downloads. So by doing so, i landed at the right wallet ?

Some people here suggested Electrum wallet for mobile phones, but I actually don't like their mobile version like one that is used for desktop.

It's important to choose Open Source wallet, use mobile hot wallet only for smaller amounts of Bitcoin, and remember to keep seed words offline and safe.

Mycelium wallet was fine but they started with adding lot of ads so I switched to BlueWallet now, and you can also check other most used android wallets with comparison on bitcoin.org website:
https://bitcoin.org/en/choose-your-wallet?step=5&platform=android

Certainly there is always the possibility that a website (any website) could also be hacked and have files or links replaced with malicious ones, but that has never happened to the Electrum website as far as I am aware, whereas there seems to be a new scam crypto wallet on the Apple or Google app stores every other day. That's also why I said you should verify the .apk you download before transferring it to your phone for installation. Even if the website is hacked and the .apk replaced with a malicious one, then you will discover that when it does not verify correctly. You cannot do any of this if you download directly from the play store.

If you opened the correct Electrum website, and if it hasn't been hacked, and as long as you weren't redirected by some malware or similar, and the Google Play upload also hasn't been tampered with, then yes, you have landed on the right wallet. The only way to be certain you are installing what you think you are installing is to verify the download as I said above.

Of course you can use a hardware wallet in combination with an Android smartphone (https://www.ledger.com/ledger-nano-s-ledger-live-mobile-compatibility-now-available-for-android-users), so it’s already something that’s been around for years, whether it is a wired connection or wirelessly via Bluetooth. While some will say that it may not be wise to show such a device in public, I don't see anything wrong with it if it doesn't store a large number of coins.

The security thus achieved is far greater than any other mobile wallet, but the question is whether we need it at all if mobile crypto wallets should only be for handling relatively small amounts?

I don't think the concern is over how many coins you are storing on the hardware wallet, but rather, making yourself a target for attackers. Attackers who see a hardware wallet (and know what it is) don't know how many coins you are or are not storing on it, and most will assume you are using it for larger sums which would be unwise to keep on a mobile wallet. Indeed, using a hardware wallet for trivial amounts such as in the region of $50 might be more of an issue, since if you are attacked, a thief is unlikely to believe that you only have $50 worth of coins on the device and will continue to push you for more which you will not be able to provide.

I do use hardware wallets when I travel, but I don't use them in public and instead would use them to top up the mobile wallet on my phone as and when necessary, which is the wallet I will spend from in public.

Just to be safe, go to the official website of Electrum which is https://electrum.org/#download, and download the android version there.
In Google Play, just to avoid the potential scam apps, some of them also have a high number of downloads. See in the official website if the link is the same as what it's indicated, there's the link for google play there.

Even the number of downloads can be fake and mislead to the wrong app. Use an APK installer and get the file direct from official website using the browser and not the app store.
Best way ever is to use the right url for the official Electrum and verify the PGP signature. It requires a little bit knowledge on how to do this but this is the safest way to check that you are about to install the official release.

Sometimes a country like ours has a custodial wallet where we can use to convert our crypto into fiat and send it to our bank accounts and the platform is coins.ph. So if you live here, it's the walllet I recommend since it's trusted but the value of crypto in there isn't real-time. In other countries, they use blockchain or coinbase, good crypto wallets and already trusted by many users.

As long as the app isn't verified like for example, Google Play Store verified those applications that is legit and have Verified protect on the page where you'll install the app. If there's no verified protect then be hesitant to download that app and check the official website first to make sure of the real apk.

This still isn't a guarantee. The Google account responsible for submitting new version nof the app to the play store could be compromised and result in a malicious app being uploaded. A Google employee could swap in their own malicious wallet app in order to steal funds. You could suffer a man in the middle attack and be redirected to malware despite clicking on the real app. Google could give the "verified" status to a malicious app by mistake.

The best way to make sure you have downloaded the real app published by ThomasV is it verify it against his public key. The only absolute guarantee you are installing what you think you are is to manually review all the code and build it yourself, but obviously most people do not have the knowledge required to do this.

You will start knowing that coinomi wallet is a bad choice after weeks of using for example like

1. If you create more than one BTC address you won't be able to access the second address unless you find way to get it's private keys, meaning you will need to learn how to use iancoleman website

2. Coinomi wallet isn't full closed source like trust wallet

Wouldn't support the use of closed-source wallets for the reason that they are inherently dangerous, obscured chunks of potentially malicious code but the problem with addresses you described is not actually a bug but a feature. When you receive a payment, the address with that payment becomes hidden, so you wouldn't be able to further reuse it easily. You can still access the address in a special section called "Address book", but you will be better off if never use it again for payments. Wallet software if designed properly always tries to preserve your privacy, that is why it should generate a new address each time you receive a payment and also a new change address each time you send bitcoins to others. Ideally, you should never merge coins from different addresses to not reveal they are controlled by a single entity, you should practice coin control to achieve maximum possible privacy.