I went to Canada on a work trip some years back, and there was basically no way for me to get mobile internet in any way - roaming would have been absurdly expensive, like several euro per MB expensive, I couldn't get a local sim card that would work with my phone(and even if I could all offers were weirdly expensive and not worth it for just a week long visit) - and yeah, I felt super uncomfortable travelling anywhere. It was difficult finding places to go or even calling a taxi.

But then I went just before the pandemic hit and I managed to get a card with like 2GB of data on it, and oh my god it transformed the experience entirely, for the extact reasons you said - it was just liberating. I could suddenly summon an uber, find places to eat, look up opening times at nearest attractions....my stay was about 100x more enjoable thanks to that.