With Zeus LN mobile app, the node is in the phone, opening a channel w/ Olympus,
Discussion
So Zeus is, what they say, a self-custodial wallet?
Yes
So is it not recommended for beginners?
As with every self custody wallet make sure to store your seed words properly.
I'll keep that in mind. So what are the upside and downside of using a self-custodial wallet?
You don’t have to worry about a custodial service stealing all your funds.
The only down side is having to take responsibility for losing your funds (seed words).
So it's basically the same as phoenix?
Similar, but different. Phoenix manages your channels automatically in the background without any user intervention. Zeus is basically a traditional lightning node in a mobile framework. You can open and close channels with any LSP, balance yout channels, establish peer connections, etc. I don't believe you have any of that functionality with Phoenix