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.

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.

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.