Just wondering if anyone has made it this far without one and if so how do you handle all the things in daily life that kind of force you into one?
I don’t have one. It’s not that I’m a militant Luddite, I just don’t have cell service where I live. I carry a Go Phone when I travel, but that’s the only time I use a cell phone at all. (Flip phone, for the record.)
It’s hard to know what sorts of things I handle in daily life that kind of force me into having one because so far as I can tell, I manage fine without one. I probably just don’t know what I’m missing. Just let me assure you, it’s perfectly possible to manage without one.
If it wasn’t for the GPS feature, I likely wouldn’t have one. As it is, sometimes days go by without my turning it on, and if my wife didn’t remind me I’d likely forget to take it with me when I go out. It’s not new and it’s not anywhere near the top of the pile for the year in which I bought it (2022).
I have access to one… It doesn’t have SIM card, and i only use it for
use with my Travel Sax 2.
I have Nokia 3310 for calls & texts. When it dies, i’ll use the smart phone.
(Although from my limited experience with it, i already hate it !)
What things? 
FTR, I do have a smartphone but only because it was the only type of new cell phone I was able to get with my current carrier. My old flip phone still worked fine but was going to be incompatible with their new cellular protocol.
I consider a cell phone a very important thing to have, but not a “smartphone” as such, and I don’t subscribe to a data plan. I just use the phone for voice calls and texting.
The one thing that comes to mind immediately: Most Ticketmaster tickets can only be accessed on a smartphone nowadays. Most venues no longer accept paper tickets. I happen to buy a LOT of tickets.
I felt forced into buying one seven years ago when my flip phone died. I hate it. I use it for texts, because many people seem to not be able to communicate any other way, and phone calls. I don’t use the gps on it normally, I have a Garmin in my car which routes better and has better coverage in the mountainous area I live in.
I don’t use it for anything that I am not forced to. I actively loathe it.
The last cell phone I had was an employer provided flip phone in 2012. I could have used one this morning when my internet wasn’t working and my landline is VOIP.
What inspired me to ask is a couple of things that I did today: My newspaper stopped printing a physical edition and is now only readable now via an app (they have a web interface but it’s terrible; you need the app) and both my doctor and my dentist require check-ins online. I guess technically this wouldn’t require a smartphone but practically it does. This made me curious.
The first cell phone I got was a flip phone years ago, but I only carried it if I went somewhere, because the primary reason for that one was in case the car broke down or went into a ditch; so when people started assuming that everybody carried a phone and had already called for help if needed, I needed to carry one too when I was too far from home to walk easily. In that sense I felt forced into having one. It was not a smart phone; they were just starting to exist, IIRC.
Since I got the heart diagnosis, I have been carrying a phone around with me. They’re not expecting me to collapse in a heap without warning, and if I collapse so thoroughly that I can’t use a phone then so be it, I don’t know that I’d want them trying to revive me anyway; but if I’m suddenly in trouble and in good enough shape to want to call for help I’d like to be able to. (Also if the trouble is, say, that I broke an ankle out in the field. Since the heart diagnosis I feel less confident of managing to get to help somehow even if I’m significantly injured.)
However – for a phone to qualify for me to carry it around all the time, it needs to be a) seriously waterproof because sometimes I get drenched (rain, irrigation work, washing produce) b) seriously shockproof because I am a klutz c) small enough to fit easily into pockets that I also have to carry a lot of other things around in when doing fieldwork. And that phone turned out to be a Kyocera Dura. And that phone doesn’t download any apps it doesn’t come with; and it doesn’t come with many. It can’t scan anything; all those “scan code” things are useless to me. I can’t click on a link in a text. It theoretically has a browser and theoretically can do email, but the screen’s so small that with my eyes it’s effectively useless for either and I don’t even have the email set up.
It’s very difficult to text on, but it does allow minimal communication with somebody who refuses to use anything other than text, and for the sort of security systems that insist on sending you a text as confirmation.
It can also serve as a hotspot, which is very useful as my main internet connection goes down a lot, sometimes for several days. In this location it’s crawlingly slow as a hotspot, but so is the main connection.
But in any case I never know exactly how to answer the “do you have a smartphone” question. In some ways I do, and in some ways I don’t.
The strange thing about cell/smartphones, is that when everyone (for a given value) finally had one, was the exact same moment when it was impossible to reach people by making phone calls.
(Yes, I’m being flippant, but there’s truth in the flippancy)
What are all these things in daily life which require you to have one?
I have one but don’t use it much: I access the internet through a desktop (except when I am traveling and then through a laptop). I use my landline for the couple times a week I make or receive voice calls. I don’t do texting (except for 2FA).
So my smartphone has few functions: 1. Three or four times a year I make phone calls while traveling–such as an emergency when my car breaks down. 2. 2FA for a few financial websites. 3. a backup when my landline goes down or (as hotspot) for when my ISP goes down.
So if I hadn’t decided I need one for emergency or backup situations I wouldn’t have one.
I mentioned: tickets to concerts and sporting events often are only accessible on a smartphone.
I’m not sure, but think the only way to pay for parking on Seattle streets is via an app.
As mentioned, tickets to events
I don’t strictly need it for air travel, but it’s a whole lot easier. Check in, change seats, boarding pass, order meals, track baggage, and flight status all on my phone.
All good points, and they can usually be solved on a case-by-case basis. I think it’s fine if a newspaper is only available electronically, but I’d be resentful if I had to use a smartphone app instead of my computer and 24" desktop screen. Even so, the app would probably work on my Android tablet, and on my smartphone, too, provided that both were within range of my wireless. I just lack a data plan because I’d never use it.
The doctor or dentist check-in workaround would depend on exactly how it worked. When Home Depot had only curbside pickup during COVID, you paid for the item online and when it was ready for pickup, you drove to the pickup area, and were supposed to tap on a link in the email to notify the store. Well, good luck with that if you don’t have data. I just used the cell phone to call the store and tell them I was there.
When I was returning an item to Amazon, you were supposed to take it to a particular store and show them “the QR code on your smartphone” (everybody and their dog has a smartphone, right?). I just uploaded the QR code to the phone.
For me most of these things happen so rarely, or not at all, that it’s not worth the bother of having a fully functional data-enabled smartphone. I just have the cheapest, smallest smartphone I could get (actually, since I was a longtime customer, they just gave me a Samsung J6 free when my flip phone became obsolete).
That sounds like more than just a simple app, it would have to be an app somehow linked to a money account. I hate, hate, hate that kind of thing.
Correct. Credit card is entered
I don’t see any other way to pay, though.
I don’t even have a flip phone.
I’m not averse to getting one. I’ve just been procrastinating for a couple of decades.
Whenever I decide that I want to buy one, the one I want is just a little bit more expensive than I am willing to pay for.
My parents have never owned any kind of mobile phone, and they still don’t. They manage fine. The biggest annoyance to my mom is those stupid “in-the-app” online coupons at grocery stores that seem to be becoming more and more popular. To be honest, I’ve had a smart phone since the first iPhone came out, and I’m annoyed by those coupons and believe I have used them just twice ever.
Can Uber/Lyft be accessed conveniently without a smart phone? That’s another common use, for me at least. Just used Lyft today to get a ride to the airport, in fact.
Yes Uber as well. I am literally in an Uber as I type this (and was in a different Uber when I typed the OP 
)