> phone with no sim card is sufficient enough
It's most certainly not. Phones connect to a cell tower even without a SIM to make emergency calls. The phone can still be tracked and it's not a difficult leap from there to identify the owner of the phone.
Strikes me as almost negligent to say to "not be hyperbolic" and then completely downplay exactly how they can track you in the real world.
I keep forgetting this is no longer a tech forum, so i miss things that i think would be understood.
You obviously have to enable airplane mode, and have it on by default.