Republic Wireless, Sprint LTE + Moto X

[Nrbelex]

Nope, had the EVO Shift. And yes, it was on par with the Pinto in terms of performance.

 

It exploded when you dropped it on its rear!?

[CAL7]

What does everyone think about the Moto X being Band 25 only? I realize LTE is a backup to WiFi for RW, but with only one LTE phone, so far, and that one phone only supporting Band 25, will the LTE service be competitive? Any rumors of a tri-band RW phone? Perhaps their carriage agreement with Sprint restricts RW to the one band??

[Geesmill]

What does everyone think about the Moto X being Band 25 only? I realize LTE is a backup to WiFi for RW, but with only one LTE phone, so far, and that one phone only supporting Band 25, will the LTE service be competitive? Any rumors of a tri-band RW phone? Perhaps their carriage agreement with Sprint restricts RW to the one band??

 

For the amount that I use my phone these days and the amount that I'm around wifi I'm thinking band 25 will be ok for me.  Also these phones that come from Republic will only work on Republic, so I'm thinking resale isn't that big of a market to worry about either.  Would I like to have additional bands available yes, but having a smartphone for $40/month sounds pretty good.

[Geesmill]

Got my Republic Moto X ordered today.  Going to get 30 days to try out the new and improved hybrid calling.

[CAL7]

Got my Republic Moto X ordered today.  Going to get 30 days to try out the new and improved hybrid calling.

Please post your results. I like the technology and the price, but $300 for a device that's only good on one small MVNO seems risky.

[Geesmill]

Please post your results. I like the technology and the price, but $300 for a device that's only good on one small MVNO seems risky.

Will do, I have some of the same fears with a small MVNO. I mainly want to see how the hybrid calling has improved. I had one of their single band Defy XT handsets during the beta launch and ended up returning it due to unresolved issues.

 

Moto X looks like it is a good handset and luckily I have an existing Moto handset, so I will be able to take advantage of the $100 Jelly Bean trade up discount if I end up sticking with Republic.

 

http://www.mototradeup.com/?q=start

[iansltx]

My X came in today. First impression: wow this is a heavy phone. Second impression: wow that's a nice screen. Third impression: wow, WiFi calling actually works really well 99% of the time (and yes, I did experience the 1%).

 

Haven't tried WiFi to cellular handoff but I have to keep my plan at its current level (WiFi + 4G) until December 13 so I'll have plenty of time to test that.

 

The voice quality on WiFi calling, as long as you don't experience any hiccups (I did for a few seconds in a ~12 minute call), is miles better than the quality of a standard cellular call. That's to be expected, since you're throwing a lot of bandwidth at the problem, but it's nice having a cell phone that will actually hit landline-quality voice to an actual landline.

 

It's a bit of a drag that the only RW phone is single-band, sure, but RW only offers LTE on their top plan anyway, and tri-band support wouldn't exactly encourage WIFi usage, seeing as how the current Spark speed tests rolling in are faster than any connection I can get my hands on in this area.

[CAL7]

Can you specifically comment on the full duplex capabilities when on WiFi? Do you have true 2-way conversation? Is there side-tone?

[Geesmill]

Can you specifically comment on the full duplex capabilities when on WiFi? Do you have true 2-way conversation? Is there side-tone?

Got my X activated today. There were a couple of issues with activation, but after opening a ticket and a couple of emails back and forth got the handset up and running. Made a few WiFi calls and even walked away for the WiFi to do the cell handoff. It was seamless and I actually didn't even realize the call had gone to cell. Sound quality has really impressed me so far. It sounds landline quality or better.

 

I signed up for the LTE package so that could really try it out and the only speed test I ran was impressive. I will be driving for the holidays so I will get to put the service through its paces. Update to follow.

 

[Geesmill]

Well after a week with the Republic Moto X my initial report is that this is a really nice service for a low price.  I have experienced some voice and text issues, but it looks as if this is due to wifi issues in hotels, etc.  For the most part the voice quality has been equal to if not better than normal CDMA voice call quality.  I have experienced issues where calls didn't connect or test calls were not received or go to voice mail on the Republic handset.  Again these were on wifi networks that were in hotels, coffee shops, etc. and had questionable connection speeds.

 

I still have a few weeks left in the trial period and will continue to test.  At this point I'm not sure if I would consider this a replacement for a business line.  Right now I'm leaning towards this being for personal use or for a student.  There have been test texts that I have sent to the Republic handset that have just disappeared into the ether, so I'm sure that would become an issue with anyone, but again this seems to be due to the wifi I have been connected to.  Still seems that Republic should have that baked in, but this is a small company.  I was surprised this week when they pushed out a software update within a week of the Republic Moto X being out for the general population.

 

One thing I haven't dug into is running a VPN on this handset.  Republic's whole business plan is based on users connecting to open wifi points which isn't really a smart thing to do.  This being a test handset and not having any corporate data on it I haven't been to concerned, but I'm sure that would be a concern to some users.  There is a VPN option listed in the settings and as this is a custom rom I'm assuming that it is a possibility, but only free time will tell.

 

Anyway hope everyone had a great turkey day.

 

Safe Travels.

[CAL7]

Mr. Geesmill - Great report. Thank you! I expect some problems and as long as i know about it (e.g. dropped calls), I am willing to deal with them; but the missing texts worry me because we won't know they ever happened.

 

Do you know: Did your 30 day trial begin when you ordered the phone, when it shipped, or when you activated it?

[UserDemos]

What would you think about using this phone, but with the WiFi being provided by a MiFi / hotspot from another provider like AT&T or T-Mobile? Do you think that would be as effective and clear as WiFi? More options if you are away from WiFi a lot, but cheaper than a plan with voice, but you'd have to carry a MiFi around.

[Geesmill]

Mr. Geesmill - Great report. Thank you! I expect some problems and as long as i know about it (e.g. dropped calls), I am willing to deal with them; but the missing texts worry me because we won't know they ever happened.

Do you know: Did your 30 day trial begin when you ordered the phone, when it shipped, or when you activated it?

Yes I totally agree. Having a voicemail pop up is something that I'm accustom to from time to time but with as prevalent as messaging has become having messages disappear is not something I'm ready to deal with at this point.

 

From the literature I have read on the Republic site and their technical support community it looks like the 30 days start the day the phone was delivered by FedEx. I'm not really worried about having an issue with returns as I have returned a beta test phone previously and was promptly refunded what's I was owed. Republic seems to be a pretty honest outfit and seems to get with you about issues pretty quickly. I haven't opened any tickets on the texting issue as of yet because once I got off the hotel wifi that was questionable things have been better messaging wise.

[Geesmill]

What would you think about using this phone, but with the WiFi being provided by a MiFi / hotspot from another provider like AT&T or T-Mobile? Do you think that would be as effective and clear as WiFi? More options if you are away from WiFi a lot, but cheaper than a plan with voice, but you'd have to carry a MiFi around.

I have talked with a few people about that and technically it may be plausible but I don't know if I would be willing to haul another gadget around. For me the few dollars in savings doesn't seem to be worth the extra effort. When I was looking at picking up the Republic Moto X I originally was interested in just checking out the difference in quality from the Moto Defy XT that was the beta test phone.

 

At this point the X is head and shoulders above the Defy. There are seamless hand offs between wifi to cell for the most part and voice quality has been pretty good. From the public posts Republic is working on quality issues at this time as all the new users roll onto their network, so even though this is a commercial launch there is still a lot of fiddling going on behind the scenes. Republic has already pushed out a small software update this week so they appear to be diligent about quality control during this launch.

 

After having the X a few days I started contemplating ditching Sprint and then switching over. These days I don't spend a lot of time using my phone and last month I think I had less than 500 MBs of data usage on my line. I'm around wifi most of the time and the media I do consume while out and about is for the most part downloaded on wifi, so I was thinking I could drop down to the $10/month talk and text plan and then just do data when around wifi and save some money.

 

Then I had some issues with messaging and while this isn't a deal breaker I experienced something else that surprised me. After years of being in a bogged down 3G network I got my first taste of LTE and suddenly all the little work arounds I had come up with were not necessary anymore. If I needed a big file download or wanted to stream something I could do it and not have to twist in the wind as the data struggled along.

 

So at this point after only a week I'm still undecided but still happy to test out my usage case. For a text and talk plan $10/month is a smoking deal even though the X seems like a bit of overkill. There is talk on the Republic message boards about the possible release of the Moto G on Republic which in my mind is going to be a perfect solution for a ton of people. Low priced handset and affordable service plans could really shake things up. The X is a nice piece of hardware, so much so that it has me wanting to use data more often, so it is making the decision a lot harder. That and me being on a grandfathered plan that means that Republic while saving me money, isn't going to save me enough money to make the decision a slam dunk.

 

One thing that is a slam dunk is the Moto X. Even with it being single band, I have been extremely impressed with all the features and just the quality of the phone. Could it be that I was using an old Moto XPRT and anything would be a huge leap forward, most definitely, but I am not a spec obsessed user and this phone just works. Ok Google Now is constantly impressing me as has the active notifications. Full disclosure I use to do network maintenance for Sprint/Nextel and the old, trusty Iden gear was bulletproof, so I am a little biased. I also like the idea that the phone is assembled in the states and yes I know that the guts are manufactured elsewhere, but baby steps right.

 

Anyway, sorry to have rambled on, but I just wanted to add that I have gone around getting info on the Republic message boards and lets just say it has once again shown me how great s4gru is and what a great group of volunteers we have to moderate and keep the trolling and flaming to a minimum.

 

Update to follow.

[Geesmill]

Bloomberg article on Republic and Wifi Offload at the 4 national carriers.

 

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2014-01-02/what-wi-fis-popularity-means-for-cell-phone-carriers#p1

Edited January 6, 2014 by S4GRU
Changed link to Page 1 of article

[Geesmill]

Looks like Republic Wireless is rolling out the Moto G in April.  Might be a nice fit for students and children.

 

https://republicwireless.com/ip/moto-g

[WiWavelength]

Seven new handsets -- Samsung, Nexus, Moto -- coming to Republic Wireless this summer.

 

https://republicwireless.com/phones/?utm_source=SilverpopMailing&utm_medium=email&utm_content=20160511_new-phones%20(1)

 

AJ

[red_dog007]

And financing!

 

And BYOD! Seems like it should expand to all Android M unlocked devices but currently limited to approved devices (the ones they will sell)

I used to have RW, but back when 5GB was $30/mo and they handed credits out like candy.  Not much of a fan of these plans because I am a heavy data user, but they are nice plans and cheaper than Fi.
 

[Fraydog]

And financing!

 

And BYOD! Seems like it should expand to all Android M unlocked devices but currently limited to approved devices (the ones they will sell)

 

I used to have RW, but back when 5GB was $30/mo and they handed credits out like candy.  Not much of a fan of these plans because I am a heavy data user, but they are nice plans and cheaper than Fi.

 

 

 

And GSM BYOD, on a carrier that brands itself as "the fastest 4G LTE network" - obviously T-Mobile.