I’m interested in your setup.
What kind of smartphone works best, cheapest, higher end, does it make a difference?
Do you buy a new one, someones discard?
A friend changed providers mostly to get a new phone, so he just gave me the old one. I’d guess it’s four or five years old. The screen is about size of the credit card. It opens up with a real keyboard in the bottom part. It’s definitely poor for surfing the web, but I only use it now and then for that, mostly checking email from time to time if I’m out of town.
There was no fiddling around to make it work with wifi or anything like that. I enable wifi, I do my internet stuff in the McDonald’s or hotel room or wherever I am that has wifi, and then I turn the whole thing off again.
I have no “apps” on it as the first thing they ask you is a lot of personal questions. I don’t even want to make up a fake persona for that.
I use it mostly to play music that I’ve transferred to its own memory card, to take pictures now and then (note that there would be no location info on the pictures), and for making voice or text notes to myself.