We had no significant difficulty getting by without using the phone as a phone, but there was much more that could or should have been possible to do. When throughout the day I found spots from which I could access WiFi I tried to get whatever immediate information was important to us. Numerous times I had reason to check opening and/or closing times, or to find what bus or train would get us to where we wanted to go. Being able to view an online map rather than a printed one would have better told us where we were or where we were going. Access to a translating app couldn't have hurt. Each evening at our hotel I would log in to its WiFi (primarily from my laptop) and try and find whatever I might need for our next day, but there were always on-the-spot needs, and of course I couldn't foresee everything we might want to do. So even if I wasn't intending to take photographs, my phone was on the whole more often in my hand than in my pocket, but it wasn't performing the functions I'd hoped or expected it would. I learned the hard way that though putting my phone into airplane mode definitely saved me money, it also made me dependent on WiFi that I'd thought would be available, but all too often wasn't.