Re:Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
by oracle2025 on Saturday August 26, 2023 @04:01PM
(#37276321)
Android Tablets with Mobile Internet are perfectly fine phones. I've used a LTE Samsung tablet exclusively as my only "Smart" phone for a while, and had a Dual-Sim to share the same Phone number as on my "Dumb"-phone, (Nokia 8110 4G) ...
Re:Giving up the iPad-only travel dream
by NoZebra120vClip on Sunday August 27, 2023 @08:02AM
(#37281814)
From 2015-2019, my only mobile device was an Android tablet with no SIM card. At purchase, I signed up for a Google Voice number, and I sort of got by with VoIP service over WiFi wherever I could.
Since then, I've purchased a proper mobile phone, and I transferred my landline home phone over to that SIM card, and it's my main line now. I use my Voice number very rarely.
One of the drawbacks to SIM cards is that you can't really get the phone service mirrored or transferred to a regular computer. Sure, you can "link" the phone if it's nearby, but the service itself stays there.
I've had a number of times where I'd really like to have voice/SMS service on that number available via computer (some people I know are actually creeped out by my having two phone numbers at once), but what can you do.
I haven't traveled since the Before Times anyway, so boarding a plane with devices is the least of my worries.
As for the form factor, I do travel with a tablet. More specifically, a 2-in-1 device, with a stylus. An x86 one, though (specifically, Dell Latitude 5290, which has specs like MS Surface, but was 3x cheaper) - because I've learned from experience that iPads and Android tablets are just large phones without the phone call function, and not suitable for any productive use. Meanwhile, my Dell hosts a touchscreen-optimized Windows 10, which hosts a Linux distro, which hosts the actual OS - Emacs.
(I also learned to love the Ribbon. On a 2-in-1, it's very obvious what Microsoft was going for, and why it's a good design - for touchscreens.)