On 2026-10-12 09:54, Dianne Skoll via linux wrote:
But no, I would never have two cellphones.
We found a use-case for a 3rd phone between 2 people. This is a Umidigi G9 tablet that has dual SIM slots. It's an 11" tablet. Use-case: travel with minimal luggage. The tablet is large enough to be usable for many laptop-like tasks, though clearly NOT anything requiring keyed entry, though I suppose one could get a keyboard, despite that defeating portability. Tablet serves as phone, e-reader, decent map display, etc. We paid $200 on Amazon, but more recently they dropped to $140 before going out of stock. I suspect there are other similar offerings now. Only 4G mobile. Decent screen, 256G "disk", 4G RAM. Fast charger (needed as battery is 6000MAh). Quite respectable speed. Camera annoyingly puts a watermark on images. There's no switch. Sigh. Possibly there's some magic fix. I see lots of software to "remove watermarks". In Canada we use Noname/PC Mobile -- $5 SIM and $28 / month approx with 3G data. In NL just recently we paid Euro 20 for a 30 day SIM from Lyca mobile with 5G data and unlimited NL calls and texts. No international, but we use WhatsApp for that, careful to include a little personal info as possible. However, European accommodation people use WhatsApp more than anything else. It was very useful on this trip to sort out some timing issues with our host in Utrecht and saved a lot of bother. Apparently we could have got the same package 5 euros cheaper, but found Dr Mobile in Leiden who did the install and setup and checked we could call his store number, get to internet etc. Worth the service and avoiding fumbling with tiny SIM. We did have to do some work to fix things for personal wishes: Thunderbird for mail, OneCal for calendar (which we use on NCF server, not Google or ...) and a few other things like that. So for us not "never", though we have the 3rd phone under a pseudonym I use for artistic activities to try to avoid confusion with our other devices. Overall, we've been quite happy with it. At home, used to listen to podcasts or check weather forecast etc. To unsubscribe send a blank message to linux+unsubscribe [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org To get help send a blank message to linux+help [ at ] linux-ottawa [ dot ] org To visit the archives: https://lists.linux-ottawa.org