Warning: Rambling, Ranting, and Affiliate Links to follow!
After having a “feature” phone for the last 6 years of so, I finally decided to take the plunge and upgrade to a smartphone with a company called Republic Wireless. The insane thing is that the plan I got is only $10 a month with unlimited calling, texting, and data (sort of)!
This seemed too good to be true, so I was reassured by the fact that they have a 30 day money back guarantee on the phone. It’s expensive compared to the “free” iPhone that Verizon would give me, however, considering that their plans are more like $50 bucks a line per month for data, the payback on actually buying the phone is pretty short.
My actual bill with my wife right now comes out to around $80 per month, so if we were to both buy phones for $150 each, the payback would be $300 / ($60 saved per month) = 5 months. At this point we could go back if we wanted, be even on the charges, and own a phone that could be resold.
The way it works is that the handset acts like a VoIP receiver when in range of WiFi. This saves a ton of money on data transmission. It then uses Sprint’s network when out of WiFi range. With the $10 plan, you only get data while able to hook into WiFi, but I could really care less.
This could actually be a benefit, as I’ve never wanted to be one of those people who uses their phone at all times, and it seems it would be slightly harder for corporations/government to track your exact position at all points during the day. In some ways, I see this as an advantage. If you really need data everywhere, there’s a $25 plan or $40 plan, but I’m not anticipating getting either of those. You can actually change the plan twice a month anyway, so maybe if we’re on a trip or whatever it would be worth it.
Not quite that old… Image
As for the phone, it’s a Motorola Moto G. To me, it’s absolutely incredible, but then you have to understand where I’m coming from – a 5 year old “feature phone.” It looks great, and it’s cool to be able to actually use aps on it. I’ve enjoyed the Kindle app, which syncs up with our actual kindle, so you don’t have to find your place again.
The reception where I am was pretty crappy with Verizon, dropping calls and cutting out occasionally. The reception with the new phone is actually really good when I’m not at home. I guess Sprint has a decent network here in the Upstate of South Carolina.
On the other hand, my reception over WiFi (3 Gigabit) seems to fade out occasionally. When it’s working correctly, though it’s really good. My mom, while testing this out, commented that it was the clearest she’d been able to hear me. It’s not perfect, but then neither was Verizon, at around 4x the cost (with a company discount).
You have to activate the featrure, but there’s an option to switch your calls to the cellular network if that works better for you.
Concerns about Republic
One possibly irrational fear about Republic is what their long-term prospects are. If they were to go out of business right now, I’d have a useless $150 phone. Maybe it could be ported to Verizon or whatever, but I’m not sure how that would work with their WiFi software. I have no reason to suspect any financial woes, but one really never knows.
On the other hand, the phone will pay for itself in 5 months, and it would still be useful as an MP3 player. Since it has a built-in radio, I wonder if I should have bought my iPod Nano a few months ago. I doubt they will go out of business in 5 months.
The second tiny concern is that I’m not able to text photos to an email address. This is quite useful for me since I don’t have a data plan everywhere, but apparently they are working on it. When I’m in WiFi range, I use Dropbox to back up my photos (which is awesome), so it’s not a concern most of the time.
How is their customer service?
Image
Soon after I signed up, I got an email from Republic welcoming me and asking if I had any questions. This seemed to emanate from an actual person, with their photo attached. Certainly a lot of this is automated, but when I emailed back to that address, like I would to someone that I know, I received very helpful and personal feedback. I’m sure they have a phone number you can call, but this was much more efficient and helpful than being put on hold waiting on a rep. Plus, if you needed help, your phone might not work anyway.
Transferring my number was easy, and took less than 24 hours. I will give Verizon credit though, it was quite easy to cancel my service with them. Hopefully this will all be reflected on my bills correctly.
Ramble: Farwell Env2 Dumbphone, You’ve Been a Good Companion
Farewell Env2, you’ve been a good friend!
Despite the incredible improvement, I’ve had some great times with my Env2 – possibly the best “feature” phone ever made.
Having an old phone was great in that I never had to worry about it getting stolen or dropping it. I dropped it a lot and didn’t really care. The other great thing was that I was able to make a custom mount for it, and actually locked part of it down in a milling machine to keep it stable for stop motion animation.
Good times, but after playing with my new Moto G, I feel like I’ve just leapt forward in time 5 years or so. I doubt I’ll miss it too much, especially with the sticky enter key!
Rant: Megabits are not Equal to Megabytes – AT&T Salesman!
I called At&t to haggle over my bill a few days ago. The guy kept trying to sell me on 6 Megabyte UVerse service that was twice as fast as my DSL. I kept correcting him that it was Megabit, but he insisted that it was twice as fast at 6 Megabytes… As there are 8 bits in a byte, this would make it 16 times faster… Maybe I should have recorded it and tried to get them to stick to that speed promise. I guess it’s “up to” 6 Megabits anyway, so that’s a pretty squishy promise.
Either way, he almost had me sold, when my Verizon phone decided to drop the call*. The next person I talked to gave me the discount I wanted without much of a hassle, so I still have DSL. As someone who once thought a 33.6 modem was awesome, I’m not that picky.
Further Rant(ish)
So my choice was marginal reception with Verizon for $40 a month or unknown reception and an awesome phone with Republic for $10 a month. I’ll keep my Env2 around just in case. Rant over. Thanks for reading this long(ish) post. Check out their service by clicking on the ad below:
Additionally, there’s a $5/month plan (seriously) using only WiFi to make calls. This might be a good solution for businesses rather than installing a paging system.
The post $10 Smartphone Plan with Republic Wireless appeared first on JcoPro.net.