I felt the same way about my MacBook Air. It's been my constant companion since 2011 to a dozen countries and dozens more cities. Love that machine.
This past April my wife bought me an iPad. The last three trips I took were with the 'Pad instead of the Air. I'm really surprised how useful that little thing is.
I feel like I can go back to a feature phone now.
Learning how to type a text again using the numpad was painful, but after a few weeks I was back up to speed.
No Facebook, Slack, Email. Not even a browser. No distractions.
When I'm out with my kids, I'm with my kids. When I'm working, I'm at my desk with a real computer.
They are being sold a lot on ebay etc. too. Refurbished and cheap, if you are willing to wait for the package.
I use C3-00 and non of it's (primitive) smart features. It's still a dumb phone.
My rest social media including whatsapp in another device.
iPad can do all the above, plus much better web browsing, reddit, video/youtube viewing, photo editing, email and writing in general (with Apple Smartkeyboard), etc. It works with touch, pencil and keyboard and just feels like my personal device.
Why not something like Galaxy Note? Or one of 7 inch phones if pencil is optional?
As far as the Galaxy Note. Android still sucks as a tablet OS.
What would convince me away would have been something like the Huawei Mate X foldable, before the US had to go all ...
One of my daughters loves drawing and ‘painting’ on the iPad, I got Procreate for her and she spends hours on it. She complains she’s started tapping to undo when she’s sketching on paper.