[thevinter]

I lived for months with a 4GB roaming plan. Given, I was not using it at home since I had a wifi connection, but I rarely came close to using all my data unless I was watching YT videos when traveling or something.

I share your sentiment and I agree we should be more mindful of people with metered/slow connections, but the last statement feels blown out of proportion.

[hedora]

I used to be able to get away with this by downloading music, podcasts and maps at home.

During the iOS 26 upgrade cycle, iOS deleted all my third-party map apps and then expired the locally downloaded apple maps. My phone also somehow lost my downloaded podcasts + music a few times, but, unlike losing three offline map applications, that didn't strand me in the middle of the woods with no cell coverage and no maps.

I agree that 4GB (or even 1GB) goes very far with a working phone OS though.

[FarmerPotato]

I arrived in a small airport at midnight. Served only by Uber. Since I use Lyft elsewhere, my phone had deleted the Uber app. It took 15 minutes to download that: crappy Wifi and some kind of 5G dead zone. Sometimes you really need to download the app.

[doubled112]

I had a 200MB data plan until ~ 2018.

I had data turned off most of the time. At home and in the office I had WiFi. Loaded the map before I left home.

Most other places I was too busy doing whatever I was doing to use a phone. Since upgrading, I guess I can look products up in stores now. That's about it.

[benatkin]

If you're highly tech literate, you can get by with 4GB or even 3GB.

What you cannot do, contrary to what someone posted in this thread, is get by on 2G. So an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure in this case.

[3eb7988a1663]

Not using it at home likely discounts a lot of personal consumption. If you can get your fill at nights, less need to access the internet during the day.

[qingcharles]

I've had a 1GB/mo $5/mo plan from good2go for the last 2 years. I've never gone over it. But that's because I go from wifi to wifi all the time and I'm very careful when I'm on cell. That definitely doesn't work for most people!