My redundancy these days is having a cellular-equipped iPad.
It's saved my bacon a few times at this point. Basically a (large and unwieldy) cell phone I can pull out when my main driver falls dead.
Pro tip: install ride share apps on the tablet in advance, because in a serious UX fail, Uber and Lyft both want you to receive an SMS code to activate accounts. I was lucky that time, that getting my iPhone out of airplane mode at 1% battery wasn't enough to trigger forced shutdown.
Lyft doesn't even have a separate app, but Uber actually offers an iPad-native experience, but is unable to activate you without SMS. Which, along with standard voice calls, is the one thing a data plan associated with a phone number won't let you do except from the primary advice.
> Pro tip: install ride share apps on the tablet in advance, because in a serious UX fail, Uber and Lyft both want you to receive an SMS code to activate accounts. I was lucky that time, that getting my iPhone out of airplane mode at 1% battery wasn't enough to trigger forced shutdown.
Uh-uh. Because you can just use a payphone to call one, right?
When I lost my phone in Madrid, and realized that I have no way to call a taxi, since I was staying in a residential area where you don't see taxis in the streets.
My Spanish was barely sufficient to explain my predicament, and I lucked out because a random convenience store clerk called me a taxi from his phone.
Which reminds me: in case you didn't notice, there are no more payphones. In 2001, I could walk up to one, and use one of them Yellow Books to do anything you could do one the phone.
Today, you need to have a smartphone to do many basic things.
Really? I live in Barcelona and there are always taxis ready for the hailing :) Uber and Lyft are not common here, though a local alternative, Cabify is. But whenever I use cabify I need to wait for ages for them to get there, and tens of taxis pass me during this time. So I only use them when I want the quiet of a nice car or when I want to know how much I'll pay in advance.
There are still some payphones here too, but most of them have been vandalised, that's true.
That very much depends on location and time. Smaller airports particularly, in off hours, may only have ten to twelve, which is not enough for that late plane that's coming in.
As part of my firewalling work from personal at my new job, I have been thinking "cellular iPad" for an ultra-portable personal machine that can also poke a personal server if needed.
(Well, that or Pi 400, but I worry how well the Pi 400 would hold up for travel, or about getting a hotel room with no easy HDMI on the TV)
It's saved my bacon a few times at this point. Basically a (large and unwieldy) cell phone I can pull out when my main driver falls dead.
Pro tip: install ride share apps on the tablet in advance, because in a serious UX fail, Uber and Lyft both want you to receive an SMS code to activate accounts. I was lucky that time, that getting my iPhone out of airplane mode at 1% battery wasn't enough to trigger forced shutdown.
Lyft doesn't even have a separate app, but Uber actually offers an iPad-native experience, but is unable to activate you without SMS. Which, along with standard voice calls, is the one thing a data plan associated with a phone number won't let you do except from the primary advice.