I'm not who the person you replied to is talking about, but I also didn't/don't use a mobile phone for a long time. Technically I had a mobile phone during this time, but it stayed powered off in my room. Now, I carry a mobile phone around but it doesn't exactly work (no network connectivity, not even Wi-Fi or USB tethering) so I don't actually use it except for testing.
I carry a laptop almost everywhere, and I even use JMP.chat for sending SMS messages, so it's functionally similar to a mobile phone, just bigger and heavier. It doesn't connect to the cell network but Wi-Fi works fine.
I think there's more to a mobile phone than SMS but I'm stuggling to think of what since I don't use it. I have GPS in my car, instead of using GPS in a mobile phone. I don't take pictures very often but when I really needed to I could use my laptop webcam (built-in or USB attached), and recently I bought a camera at a garage sale that seems higher-quality than the webcam and is much more convenient.
The ability to call 911 from anywhere is the main thing I think about that I'm missing, which is also one of the reasons I'd like to get a mobile phone working at some point, but it's difficult to gauge how important that is (since the need is rare). My friends might worry about this more than I do.
Before college, I did use a mobile phone (but mostly for gaming and taking pictures), and I am only recently out of college, so maybe I will feel more pressure to get a mobile phone in the future, and since I'm not opposed to getting one working at some point, I probably will. I just haven't gotten around to it yet.
I've never actually commented on Hacker News as far as I remember, but I'm the same JacobK as <https://codeberg.org/jacobk> and as jacobk on Libera.Chat. I'm not a bot.
