I have tried desmartphoning myself before. The reason was I do not need this expensive device with 1000s of functions and 1 day battery life, Id rather have a simple one that is mostly just a phone. I dont like typing on a phone either, prefer to use the web versions of messenger, whatsapp and signal.
The device I went with before was Nokia 8110 4G. On paper this was everything I wanted. Low price, 1 week battery, love the slidy thing, etc. Unfortunately it had two big downsides: it failed to receive most automated SMS for some reason (eg bank login tokens), and while it had whatsapp it didnt support whatsapp web, forcing me to use the t9 keyboard.
Then covid came and I had to switch back anyway to use track & trace app and other stuff. But now Im thinking again about this, do you have anything to recommend?
Laptops with 3g SIM slots that run with your fav distro. Sadly they are deactivating umts in Europe and since i’m quite slow reading into new hardware, i mostly use public wlan and <2015 laptops myself.
A library card is not much above 10 € per city per year in the cities i have one.