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A system like that would need to do more than provide a clean slate. It wouldn't be plausible that someone would be using a worn phone without having installed any apps on it. Also, I don't know how the phone would be able to obscure the contents of a micro-SD card, for example.

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> A system like that would need to do more than provide a clean slate

It just need to provide the mechanism with proper sandboxing. You still have to make this alternative look reasonable.

> I don't know how the phone would be able to obscure the contents of a micro-SD card, for example

You wouldn't use something like that for plausible deniability.

Why shouldn't it have any apps on it? From my understanding, the point is that the crucial subset of user data is not available in that usage mode.

The malicious actor would find it very suspicious (especially if/when these features are in popular platforms and thus widely known), breaking the deniability.

It's your own responsibility to tailor this "clean" state to your liking and make it look like you use it.

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