Signal can be used without a phone using signal-cli. You can sign up with it and either attach your account to signal-desktop or keep using signal-cli
It is a convenience or inconvenience you decides to have or not.
How is that an answer to someone saying that they don't see how they can stay connected without having a smartphone?
You're changing the discussion now.
The original point is this: Given that people want to be able to text with their friends in what is perceived as a normal way, how can they do it without a smartphone?
If you change the rules ("Given that people are fine being disconnected"), of course it changes everything.
The beginning was:
> what would it take to escape the Apple/Google duopoly?
To which someone answered:
> Has no one mentioned not using a smartphone as an option?
To which I answered that in a ton of situations this is just not an option.
And yet I keep getting answers that give examples of when it is an option. Sure, sometimes it is an option. Now for the majority of normal people who don't consider "not having a smartphone" as an option, I was saying that it is very, very hard to escape Apple/Google.
I am NOT saying that most people would die on the stop if they suddenly did not have access to a smartphone. I am saying that there is no solution to that that most people would consider viable.
> I don't think that 24/7 availability is universally perceived as "a normal way".
I never said 24/7 availability. I said "not having access to WhatsApp/Signal [in one's pocket, some of the time]". The part in brackets was implicit because we were talking about smartphone operating systems.