finally rescued my backup phone. not sure exactly how I did it, but here's what I did:
what had happened is that that viral app had apparently hooked the home button to show ads. so pressing home just opened a new browser window; and when I disabled the app the previous time, the hook was still there, so it did nothing. since then I've been using the square button to kill (swipe right) all running apps in order to get the home screen. but for now it's working correctly.
last updated 2019-12-16 15:33:02. served from tektonic.jcomeau.com