Won’t be long before they have 5G chips in and that isn’t your choice anymore. Kindles have done that since 3G, cars have started doing that, Tesla trains AI on all owner driving data, VW new electric (ID3?) will be their first with a mandatory perma HQ connection, IIRC.

Kindle with 3G was great, free internet globally. Never once showed me an ad, and most Kindles didn't have it.

When that day comes buy a monitor, or hack the firmware.

You can always break off the aerial.

Cell phone connections don't need to use aerials anymore. The antennas in smartphones are often planar arrays or square-ish fractal antennas. From the outside they literally look like little boxes or squares. The casual mechanic might have a hard time distinguishing them from a chip.

> Won’t be long before they have 5G chips in and that isn’t your choice anymore. Kindles have done that since 3G

How do these things work? Do they have a contract with a phone service operator in each country in the world for unlimited data, or what?

The device company usually has a bulk data contract with a large telecom. It isn't unusual for IoT device companies to end up as minor telecom providers themselves, buying bandwidth in bulk and reselling it to consumers.

I don't think you can buy a kindle with a cellphone radio anymore, and the ones that had them cost extra.

My Sony would pop up a nag screen in the middle of a movie or show to remind me that it wasn't connected to the internet. Eventually, I caved and connected it.

This is an option until they require internet.

Also the other side is that these cheap TVs are slow as hell. My Vizio has a 15 second startup time before it responds to commands, while it's "Smart"Cast stuff does what it does. This is before it responds to other commands, ex volume. And this is at each session, not cold boot only.

This remains true for now, but expect the ubiquity of things like Amazon Sidewalk, Helium network, and embedded cellular modules in devices to make it hard to avoid a device that phones home.