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I don't agree with those of you who are saying go with a hotspot, not a smart phone. As some have pointed out, Amethyst will end up wondering why she didn't get a smart phone long ago.
It's not that universal. I have access to smartphones in the house, but I still prefer my old flip phone for phone calls, and use a tablet for internet access.
The super-nice thing about the old flip for a low-use user like me is, I can go weeks w/o charging it, and many days on a charge for those rare times I'm making longer calls. I can't tell you how many times DW was w/o the use of her phone - it's in her purse with a dead battery.
And we are each on the T-Mobile 'Gold Plan', I still have lots of minutes and top off just $10/
year, DW uses hers more, so I top off her with $100/
year (she does most of her messaging on wi-fi at home).
And then, the tablet/laptop has a bigger screen and keyboard (virtual or physical) than a smartphone. The downside is I need to rely on wi-fi, but I'm considering this:
https://yourkarma.com/
I have not looked at the details in a while, but for low-use or occasional use, it might make a lot of sense. What I like is, no contract, the data always rolls over, and it is its own 'hot spot', so it's easy to share on any wi-fi device I have. You could do that if your smartphone package allows hot-spot sharing, but then you are tied into that kind of a contract. I could hand the karma to DW, or take it with me instead - it's not tied to any one of our phones.
Of course, for some (many?, most?) users a smartphone is the way to go. If you want that instant access anywhere, w/o carrying a laptop/tablet, that's the ticket. But that's not everyone.
Also, I got the Moto-G for DD, Gen 2 IIRC. She really likes it, one of the best 'value' smartphones from what I've read.
-ERD50