IIRC, every time each user's wallet comes online it requests their state (unless im mistaking it for the Data Loss Protection protocol). If it is a previous state then you'd know they were lying to you. It also makes it indistinguishable from a recovery event vs coming online, so it would be harder for them to decide when to give you an old state.

I may be confusing the two flows but i remember reading something like that when I was researching them.

You can all the time force close the channels.

If you choose to proceed, go to Settings > Danger zone, and click on "Force close channels". Phoenix will unilaterally close your channels, and after a 720 blocks delay (~ 5 days) your funds will be moved back on-chain.

Follow this procedure to recover your funds with Electrum app.

Do not uninstall the app or reset its internal data until you have successfully recovered all your funds!

The bigest issues I have with Phoenix is that it doesn't let you back up your channels yourself, which means you're trusting ACINQ incase of data loss. Second is that while convenient, you can only open channels with ACINQ for the time being, which is bad for decentralization.

Blixt is great but a bit more involved to use, but otherwise it works perfectly. Only issue I have with it is the relatively slow startup times, and it feels just a bit slower to send payments than Phoenix (Phoenix feels instant most of the time).

Have you tried Blixt? afaik is like Phoenix but you can manage who you open channels to, a full LN node in your phone.

I'm using Phoenix for now, but is the next on mi list!

Is it possible to back up to servers other than ACINQ's? I checked the app and I don't see it in settings