If having a smartphone and a cellular plan will become an absolute requirement to partake in the society, carriers certainly are going to hike prices. Here in Finland, cellular plans used to be very cheap, but now the prices have been soaring after the society has become more and more reliant on the phones.

Hmm yeah, usual free market trickery. In France one telco operator forced a 2euro/month minimal plan so everybody can get minimum access.

You can also use wifi. Even free wifi. You can get a very nice used phone with many years of updates for 100 dollars. You can find a worse phone for much less if you really want to.

edit: You can even get a free phone from your community. Possibly a better one than the a53. Most people have a phone or several in a drawer.

https://swappa.com/listings/samsung-galaxy-a53-5g?carrier=un...

Quite true, to the point that my data plan is not used much (I'm way below the 2G threshold) because I'm mostly indoor when I fetch a lot.

Yeah, but you need to be lucky for free wifi to be available for apps that you need to use in specific locations, like the parking meter app.

A parking spot that requires an app is certainly onerous, even for a smartphone owner.

A good point, but also a parking spot like that which is also not in range of city wifi is pretty rare, I'd reckon.