New PinePhone Ready for Newbies?

[WarpLover]

ATM I can only make and receive calls with UB-Touch. Phosh fails and also do plasma mobile. With different flavours, but BOTH are not possible to make reliable in- and outgoing calls.

Sorry if this make me sound dense, but are you paying for a carrier to make that call?

@WarpLover 
                             Yes,  you will need a carrier to be able to talk or text on your cell phone,  I guess it may be possible to use wifi calling,
but you would still need access to a wifi connection to place 'free calls'.
   I have also heard about government assistance for phone service, but I do not have any details on that.
    And there are a few that only charge you when you actually use them.
 But realistically,  basic unlimited talk and text with a few gb of data will cost you about $25 USD for one month of service, while if you give up the data, and only use the talk and text functions you 'may' get Limited service as cheap as $10 USD for a month.

BUT,  in MOST cases YES you will have to pay to something to connect to a carrier...  
     There are also options that can cost hundreds of dollars per month......

NOTE :
   At the moment Mobian is the most usable, dependable operating system on the Pine phone, Second would be Post Market (PMOS)
   Those both come with Phosh desktops, but can be changed to other destops with a bit of effort.  (KDE, Xfce etc...)
      Ubuntu with the Limori desktop was a leader early this year, but then it quit working, I am not certain if it is currently working.
    I currently have one Brave Heart phone running Mobian, one PMOS Community edition phone running Mobian, one PMOS Community edition phone running on Post Market. 
***  I used Ubuntu on my Brave Heart phone first, until it stopped working for me.

******  I understand Ubuntu Touch is working now, So I thought to be fair I should add that..!
     A fellow forum member tells me it is his favorite at the moment.

My desire is to couple a very custom PineTime and PinePhone to replace a Medical Alert system for the elderly on a fixed income. This is for a low sighted person I take care of, when I am away. They cannot dial a phone correctly. This elderly person is limited in dexterity. That is why I want this project totally simple. Nothing to read. Just a few unique symbols/color combination to memorize.

I want maybe 3 or 4 bi-colored glyphs that can be cycled through by swiping.
glyph 1: lg battery level indicator, 2 or 3 colors
glyph 2: white plus sign on red background    (there is some level of immediate medical need)
glyph 3: yellow horizontal stripe on blue background  (yet undetermined)
glyph 4: lg green square on white background    (no emergency-give me a call when you get a chance [I just need milk])
(after thinking about it, a simple red, yellow, green system would work too)

All the pinetime does is tell an app on the pinephone to send 1 of 3 predetermined SMS messages to a predetermined phone number (friend or family - not 9-11). To ensure no false positive calls, I want the normal function of the PineTime switches disabled (I think). I want switches on opposite sides being enabled at the same time to be the only way of making a call, after choosing the correct glyph. Hopefully this is foolproof. This is not for daily use, only when I am away camping - usually 4 days. So that is my target for battery life of the watch. I am not too concerned with them having to charge it if it lasts 5 days.

I don't need the clock, heart rate or blood pressure or anything else I can think of. Maybe a crude time calculation for battery life on the battery-level glyph. Waterproofing would be great, but not necessary to the main function.

I am not technical enough to know if this part is even feasible, but as a plus for the elderly community, if the base unit could be a cheap sbc capable of sending cellular SMS messages, and if it accomplish that with no monthly costs at all-breakthrough for the whole elderly community!!! Medical alert services want between $20-$70 a month!

I do have a tracfone subscription, wifi and a landline at the moment.

Your feedback would be greatly appreciated.