Shared cell phone and using trains

No --- you don't need a cell phone to use public transit.

Scrapped my answer because I’ve seen your other thread, and my answer made some wrong assumptions. I thought you might be talking about public transport in London but I don’t think you are.

sorry - don't follow. Can you clarify your question please? Are you talking about using the phone on the train?

Nigel, looking at their other thread, I think they might be asking if it’s okay if both of their train tickets are downloaded to one phone.

Having originally launched in with a previous answer about London transport and Apple Pay/cards etc, I then realised I probably wasn’t answering the right question…

I think you can only pay for one person at a time with one phone. One person gets a phone, the other gets an Oyster or uses credit card?

Thanks everyone. To clarify, we will be taking trains further north, Chester to York, etc. but also using the tube a few times while in London. I had recalled reading on this forum that there are instances when you can’t use one phone for two people?
Do we then get a paper ticket using a credit card or two paper tickets?
Thanks again!

There are two entirely different things here. Tube/public transport tickets in London are entirely different from train tickets in the rest of the country.

In London, you can pay for public transport by using a “contactless” bank card or device pay (eg Apple Pay). Each person must have their own method of payment but both could be on the same account - eg: one could use Apple Pay and the other could tap a card even if it’s effectively the same card. Or obviously use any other contactless bank card. Paper tickets are very rarely the answer within the London public transport system.

For TRAIN journeys outside of London, buy tickets as outlined in your other thread. These can be paper tickets (you can buy ahead of time then get them out of a machine at a train station once you’re there). Or you can usually download the tickets to your phone. In this case it won’t matter if both tickets are on the same phone because you’re simply using the phone as storage for tickets you’ve already bought.