The el cheepo Chinese 10 inch tablet, a ZONKO D106 from an Amazon Black Friday sale. It cost less than a hundred dollars and has a sim card slot. I purchased it to use with DJI Drone controllers that I have that do not have displays built into the controller. But that is another story.
I have an Ultra Mobile (T-Mobile MVNO) card installed in the laptop that costs me $3 for 100 MB, 100 calls, and 100 texts per month. You can purchase additional data, texts and calls on the fly. It is handy to have the card installed if you are in a place with no wi-fi, but I typically just use PDAnet with my cell phone with unlimited services to create a “free” hotspot if I am using the tablet where there is no Wifi. Ultra-Mobile is just kind of a cheap backup. The screen is a little low resolution (1280x800) but the speakers and microphone work well for calls. It works very well in tandem with Google Voice.
I don't know what Google's original intent was with Google Voice, but it is something that fell under the law of unintended consequences... only in a positive way. I am glad that this discussion about Skype came up because I needed a review of my VOIP dependance and usage. I am sorry to see Skype go because it was the first video phone app that I used long before Zoom and all of these other applications became popular.
I had not realized that the OBiHai services that made it so easy to set up standard land lines with Google Voice and a fairly inexpensive adapter had been phased out. It sounded pretty bad, but then I found there are fairly easy work arounds. I have a cordless phone system with 4 handsets that can use an Android cell phone to place and receive calls using Bluetooth. I haven't tried it, but I am pretty sure that this would work fine with Google Voice with some minor limitations.
ZONKO D106...... I have this D106 by a different Amazon seller. Now there is an upgrade version that takes a sim card......I have only Wi-Fi.
Chinese are churning these out by the tens of millions. Clue me in. Mine came with android 14. My understanding is no android updates by the seller or anyone?