You can trust "The Cloud"

Because your carrier is discontinuing 3g and lower as they roll out 5g?

It's easy enough to "dumb down" a smartphone - don't get a data plan and keep the wifi turned off unless you NEED it when out travelling somewhere.

I only got data on mine so I could use it as a "hot spot" for testing customers' internet problems. If I could log onto my hotspot with a USB NIC installed on their system it was a problem with their ISP.

Is that going to be voice and data or just data? I won't miss data. If it is anything like AMPS66 they may actually be supporting it a year or two after it is supposed to be gone. I know I had abandoned my Moto Bag phone and way over a year after it was supposed to be totally dead, I plugged it in and tried to make a call. I got a recording that said if I entered a CC#, they would complete the call for $2.99. By then I had a Jitterbug but I felt like I should have just kept my bag phone. I would have been saving $75 a year or more plus the cost of the phone. I am not sure how long that went on.

I have a Samsung Convoy that was supposed to be military GI tough. I know you can beat the s*it out of it, drop it in the concrete or drop it in the water and it still works. Mine fell off the boat in salt water and floated there for a few minutes until I could find it and pick it back up. Just be sure the rubber plugs on the ports are put back right. Try that with your smart phone.

It didn’t when you lot did things like that previously. And doesn’t in China where they still do it like that.

Living on a hillside from the nearest tower my cell phone service is spotty. A repairman had to log into my wifi to check on a part we needed on our oven a few weeks ago as he could not connect his cell service. Our land line is VoIP.

Unlikely to be anything like $25 a month with an emergency only phone and likely they only spend a bit more before leaving on the uncommon trip.

There are 2 types of users. Those like you and me that almost never use a phone, and those that seem to be on it talking, texting. or interneting almost all their waking hours.

It seems that texting is the thing instead of the phone calls for many of the big users.

For some, those 10 phone calls are an hour long each.

I would guess both, but idk.

Why turn off wifi? It's free?

I had one up until a few years ago. Not sure when it stopped working, but it was when they totally decommissioned the old analog towers. Same time my old Nokia analog phones went silent. Now virtually everything is gsm as well. No suppoert for any of the previous technology or the bandwidth they used to occupy. Kinda like analog ota tv.

I don't even trust my web host for that. WEB.COM lost both of my web sites with nothing more than a "sorry". Fortunately I was backed up here so it was just uploading everything again. I might trust the cloud as another source of backup in case your house burned to the ground but I wouldn't trust them to be my only backup and I would not put anything there I wouldn't want posted on the internet.

I have 2 phones, both of which are flip phones. I don't want a smartphone. One reason is I don't like touch screens. A real computer needs a KEYBOARD. Also, a smartphone seems to be designed for stealing personal information.

The way I heard it, they would be discontinuing 2G & 3G. That's so they can re-use those frequencies. It wouldn't make sense to discontinue one service but not the other.

Last year at a high school reunion a classmate who has an accounting firm said he could do everything with his Apple watch. When I asked how he could make a call on that little thing he said he just tells it the number or person to call.

My FIL has Apple phone, tablets and an I-watch. He also has a PC and Echo. Now there are two women telling him what to do, Siri and Alexa. Then there is the woman in the car who tells him where to go. I asked him if they ever argued.

I read recently where at least the early 5G won't be compatible between carriers so you're going to have to get a phone from the carrier or at least make sure whatever you get is compatible. Doesn't matter for me, the 5g phones are just starting to roll out, aren't cheap, I don't need a new phone and I get up to 170MB on 4g and whatever rate it's at other times, it's plenty fast.