As a native speaker, I can assure you that 99.999% Chinese communicate with characters.
Few people may type pinyin once or twice because their input tools(shu1 ru4 fa3 输入法) goes wrong or their are using a devices without Chinese characters input tools and they need to response quickly.
Reading pinyin ,with or without tones, is tiring and pinyin is taught only in China mainland. But I think it's OK to talk in pinyin if a foreigner find Chinese characters difficult.