That went away in like 2019/2020 I think. Might have been later, but been gone for quite a while now.
Correct. The only way to secure your BAT was to have it verified with a custodial partner. Otherwise it was just vBAT stored on your device. It wasn’t something that could be synced or anything.
If you’re referencing to connect to Uphold or so, this has always been required if you wanted to access BAT. Otherwise it just saved as vBAT on your device that you ONLY were able to tip Creators with.
vBAT would be in your \brave-browser folder. So if you had that on your old device, you can do a backup and move it over, perhaps. But that’s just a workaround provided by devs and isn’t anything official. You can read more about that in Option 2 over at PSA: Current FAQ - #34 by Saoiray
To answer this, some of what you kind of hinted at in prior sentences, and other questions that tend to also be asked…you may want to visit the links below: