In my experience, a slow connection can be less usable for some apps than none at all.

If there’s no connection or you’re in airplane mode, some apps will let you access locally stored/cached data, but as soon as there’s a bad connection, they’ll wipe that data by trying to unsuccessfully refresh it from the server.

If 2G speeds were what they were when it was heavily used? Sure. Nowadays? Not in my experience. I got downgraded to Google Fi’s 2G in a well-traveled part of Virginia using a flagship Samsung and I couldn’t even load directions on Google Maps where I’d already downloaded most of the map for offline use. 2G ain’t like it used to be when it was still given a second thought by providers.

How are they supposed to know which job search platforms (app or web) aren’t going to blow their bandwidth limits?

Email and chat apps will work, but everything else will slow to a crawl at best and time out at worst.

For those who can't understand this comment, here is what it means:

"I mean, it's one banana, Michael. What could it cost? 10 dollars?"

If someone needs a phone like this for email and job searching and has no other option, 2G speeds will work. It’s not e-waste for the intended purpose.

Guess how I know you've never actually tried this.

Part of my job is testing the web sites I build in the terrible real-world conditions where our customers are. Places like machine rooms, deep basements, and small towns with only municipal or small-carrier 3G cell service. (In spite of what HN believes, there are plenty of places in America with 3G or even zero cell service.)

2G speeds will not work. The device or one of the essential thousands of processes in it will time out because they were designed by tech bubble tech bros who never use their apps in the real world.

They can go to a library. Or go to basically any business (or sit outside) and use their WiFi.

It was a bit dramatic, but I've seen these guys just leave these phones behind once the data is gone. They're not likely to carry it around for the next 27 days until the data is refreshed. They'll generally just hustle for $10 to bribe the phone agent to bypass the SSN check and give them another fresh phone.

The issue is that the wifi isn't available where they need it. If I send them to the SSA building to get some federal docs, it's in a dead zone. It might be in the middle of Chicago but there isn't any free wifi for a mile in any direction from there. How do they pull up Google Maps to get home? And it's not always obvious how to get the free wifi as it doesn't just let you connect, you had to go through a multi-step process of signing in and accepting T&Cs these days. Which the phone doesn't always want to do.

I think you may be a bit out of date. There was free WiFi in basically every town. Now it's frequently a vestigial, no-longer-maintained free WiFi that works like crap, because there's no maintenance, because "everyone has cellular data nowadays".

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.

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!

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.

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.

crazy solution that might work for you: open an incognito browser and check for deals for new customers. "someone" I know was able to switch from a $50/1.2TB limited 300mbit plan to a $45/unlimited 1Gbit plan doing this.

if they have a better deal for new users: sign up for a new account under someone else in your household, and cancel your old account after you get your new account hardware setup and working.

Do you have a stable internet connection that is not your phone data plan? Many people in the lower economic class don't have that and their 3gb data plan may be the only 3gb they can use for the internet in any given month.

It's not wasted bandwidth; we've reached this level of ads because brands have realized that brainwashing the populace via ads to make them want their brand is cheaper than building a better product, so the bandwidth is a small price to pay for brainwashing people.

If we didn't have ads, people would not only need less bandwidth, they'd buy less physical junk, and quite possibly be happier for it.

Estimates suggest that between 1/3 and 1/2 of all Internet users in the U.S. use an ad blocker.

Now that we have auto play video ads? Most of it.