When the RetroChallenge was new, smartphones weren't a thing, and they certainly weren't something that the vast majority of the people on a retrocomputing web site (even the people who are literally children 18 and younger) would have.

I personally think that having a cell phone as an assist machine is cheating a little bit, although in years past, there was a lot of talk about what counts as a suitable assist machine and what services of a modern computer are and aren't appropriate to use remotely.

One example is that 68k mail clients have issues with the security required by some very modern ISPs and very modern types of mail servers. (I don't think Exchange 2007 and newer allow any kind of unencrypted pop or IMAP access, for example.) The question there is whether or not it's "fair" to use a modern computer via SSH or telnet (like an OS X machine or SDF or a local linux computer) to do things like run alpine, ttytter, or lynx/links (and possibly access m.facebook.com)

The other question is whether or not you're allowed to use something like an iPod if you don't sync new music to it during the month and treat it basically the same as you'd treat a cassette/dat/cd walkman (devices that can't access facebook/twitter/e-mail.)

One issue is that if you're allowing yourself your phone and a remote assist computer for text-only use (under the guise that you could have telnetted into your ISP's or university's UNIX server when 68k Macs were new) then I think what you're going to end up with is a phone and a dumbterm to a remote UNIX system.

My guess is the concensus will be that at that point, you may as well just telnet or SSH into said UNIX system from your Power Mac G4 and give up.