Another thought if you are somewhere that there is free wifi around ... you could get a cheap first gen kindle fire and root it and then it would have sound and be able to all sorts of things with android. They are super easy to root and install android on. I haven't explored the development forum on this site for kindle fire, but there should be plenty of info on how to do it in there. I just joined recently and my first gen kindle fire days were a while ago
but they were fun to experiment on.
When I had my first gen kindle (not the fire) which was 3G I did experiment with the web browser and sending emails. It was pretty slow, but it did work. You could also browse some web sites, but it was a very basic browser. Not something to do if you had other options, other than to mess around with for fun. Although emergency use would work too.