Just do it. Everyone uses earbuds. Nobody cares.

David Foster Wallace wrote: “You’ll stop caring what people think about you when you realize how seldom they do.” Remember that you’re always biased towards your own perceptions. And that most people simply don’t give a shit.

I know it's not what you want to hear, but you're just going to have to be the blind idiot sometimes and your self righteousness will just have to overpower your insecurity... it sucks, but it's the most practical way sometimes.

everyone of a certain age has a phone almost everywhere they go.
You're not limited to headphones these days: there are glasses frames, baseball caps, beany hats, little clip-on speakers, bone-conduction jaw-based sound devices, just to name a few.
And earbuds are just ... everywhere. Like nobody ever associates someone wearing an earbud with blindness. If you're that worried, grow your hair out a little and wear a flesh-coloured bud and 90 percent of the time nobody will even notice. You can just pretend to be using your phone like the sighted, if the label is a big deal.

3 people interrupted me on a train yesterday (different trains, not all at once), to ask about my Braille Screen input. 2 wanted to know why I was using so many fingers, and 1 wanted to know why her blind friend didn't do that (she clearly recognised I was using Braille). SO there are loads of educational opportunities for the sighted, too.

Do you have an (identification) cane? If there's something indicating you're visually impaired most people except for assholes (which are rare) will maybe give a curious stare but then ignore it. You can always get an identification cane to just whip out when you really want to look around with your phone. Or put on sunglasses to look a little more blind. One thing I would stress is be careful to point it to people (especially women) as little as possible because many people are paranoid about being filmed these days. If someone is standing really close to something you want to read I would walk up closely to it and kindly explain that you need to use your phone to read it because of your disability, even if it inconveniences you.

When it comes to security, as someone who also heavily relies on his smartphone I just try to not have the newest or fanciest model. Maybe get a case that makes it less obvious what model phone you have. It's always a good idea to also have a dumbphone on you if you can for when your smartphone dies, be it by you getting robbed or just because the battery runs out, so you can call someone to pick you up.

Really, no one is paying attention. I see people walking and looking down at their phones or talking into the air. If someone does ask you what you are doing look puzzled and say, "why do you ask?"

Good luck!

I only use Lookout when there is no one with normal vision where I am.
In all other cases, I ask that someone read it to me, whatever it is. Faster, more practical and less different.

I am totally blind. I do it all the time. I don’t use earbuds and my phone is always at a pretty good volume. If they care. Well I don’t give a flying frick so deal with it! :D heh! That’s my philosophy.

Actually most people don’t even care maybe the occasional person but so occasional it is not a common thing.

More people are curious and ask a lot of question and it’s like this is how siriusly use her phone. Isn’t that cool! And they’re like really cool thanks for showing us giving us a lesson. Once I was carrying around my perkins brailler and sat down and gave them a lesson/demo. And the guy was like wow thanks now can I pay you for it? And I was like. Hahaha! I am so glad you enjoyed it but no I do this as a way to educate people. I am in tech and assistive tech and some advocacy politicking stuff so yeah. It’s always fun.get to meet a lot of wow! You’re fast on that thing and you are amazing. I could barely text on my phone, how can you do that? That’s awesome.

If you use those little earbuds, the ones I have you can just use one, less conspicuous.

Unfortunatelly, there's no way around it. I usually turn the volume down or use earbuds. I mean I don't have this type of anxiety so it might not sound helpful. But I hope you get used to using your stuff in Public. People don't care about it as much as you think.

Headphones

Sometimes you just have to swallow your pride and do what you have to do. I have to look very closely at my phone screen in order to see everything. Haven't gotten any negative comments on that. It seems like you just don't want people to know that you are disabled to begin with and I get that. However it doesn't have to be your whole identity. Also you can reduce the amount of times you has to be using a screen reader. For example if you are going to a restaurant what I do is look at the menu online beforehand that way I'm not Burying my nose in a pamphlet or having to inconvenience the waiter even further by asking for a braille or large print menu. You're worried about looking stupid but usually people aren't paying that much attention to what you're doing. At the end of the day it's not that big of a deal what people think of you.