I have three phones currently an IPhone 4s 8GB on Verizon for work. Cellular coverage is better than Project fi or RW and since work pays for that one the price is right. This is a pretty good phone but expensive if I had bought it and most likely I would be locked into the Verizon service contract since it seemed cheaper than their pay as you go with data. I have some dead spots near where I live but nothing like Sprint or T-Mobile in this area.
My wife has a Moto G third generation sixteen GB with a thirty two GB sim card on RW. The Sprint coverage is poor where we live but we have WiFi at the house and can get a cellular signal within a few miles of the house. Our last bill with RW (Republic Wireless) was $15.25 hard to beat that and we are pretty happy with the service when I have contacted RW support they have been great.
We also had a Moto X first generation on RW which was used at home and in Brazil to text with no problems on WiFi but we didn’t try any calls in Brazil. This was my wife’s phone and she was happy with it. While in Brazil it was lost. When she returned here she took the Moto G and I needed to get a new phone.
I started at RW with a Moto E first gen and a sim card. This just didn’t have enough built in memory and I replaced it with the Moto G that eventually became my wife’s. I left the phone in a drawer and the battery died and I then learned about the problems of letting a cell phone battery run to low and was unable to recover it without opening the phone and going through some extra steps to get it back up and running. Eventually this phone was thrown out.
When my wife took the Moto G I decided to try Project fi. It hasn’t been a full month yet but my first charge was $35.32 ($27.81 with discount), I have used less than .20 GB for the month so I should get a refund at the end of the month. I am about twenty days into the billing cycle right now. I got a Nexus 5x 16GB and I am very happy with this phone running Waze and Audible on my daily commute it keeps up just fine. Cellular coverage is about the same as RW and call quality is as good but the speakers on this phone aren’t as good as the Moto X, Moto G or the IPhone. The thing I like most about the phone is I can switch to another carrier if I decide to and I get updates from Google not from RW or another carrier. I am happy with this so far but I would use this phone on RW as well if it were an option.
I like the service I get from RW and fi but the phones being locked to their service really puts a kink in it for me. Most places I am in during the day have WiFi and I use that for almost all my data and calling.
First full month on fi.
$27.37 for the month of May through June.
Online home of Jon 