Google Project Fi

Anyone signed up and using it? What is your experience?

I used up all my data very quickly. I like T-Mobile better - with Binge On I don’t need unlimited data.

I’ve had it for about 6 months. My bill is around 70 a month because I’m financing the Pixel 2.

I’m very happy with it so far.

The customer service has been decent too. I lost my wallet and had to cancel my cards. This would have made my bill late, but they pushed back my due date so I could wait for my card to be replaced.

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Pretty expensive for what you get. Used to be worth it to me for the service - you can get a human on the phone in 2 minutes. But last time my phone (Nexus 5X, known manufacturing defects) malfunctioned they told me it would be replaced free, then charged me the device protection premium anyway. Refused to refund and dumped me onto LG warranty support who also did nothing. So I’m looking to move at this point.

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The 5X was a terrible phone. I will never buy another LG product again due to my experience with that phone. I have been reasonably happy with my $200 Moto G5 Plus. I can’t bring myself to spend $800+ on a phone.

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Don’t recommend it at all unless you need some of the cheapest possible cell service.

Some of the pleasures you can look forward to:

  • Multiple choice data availability
  • Anything less than LTE, data is all but unusable
  • Random ability to make or receive calls
  • Notifications of incoming calls and texts that may or may not occur in realtime
  • Wi-fi calling beyond terrible
  • Transmit side on calls may or may not bother to transmit your side of the conversation or might randomly cut the gain to <10% of normal
  • Reasonably responsive - but ultimately ineffectual - technical support … I mean if the Google is hoovering up everything, why can’t they track their own crappy cellphone’s performance without me going through the acrobatics of booting safe mode and all but factory resetting the phone to track down an intermittent issue when I don’t make a lot of calls?

I’ve had three phones with Fi. Two Nexus 5Xs (one bootlooped and it took an agonizingly long time to get replaced) and lately the Moto X4. They’re admittedly not premium phones, but if Fi is only decent on Pixels then Google can go get bent.

Been meaning to switch carriers, just dissatisfied with the pricing on handsets.

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I’ve had Fi for 8 months w/ a Pixel XL - Zero complaints, worked flawlessly. Been paying $75-90/mo, so saving a little vs my previous AT&T plan, but the real benefit was telling AT&T to go kick rocks - had them for 5 yrs prior, could not get a consistent signal at home less than 1 mile from AT&T global headquarters. Had AT&T b/c Sprint had been even worse. Seeing as I haven’t had any problems, haven’t had the opportunity to test customer service…inconceivable it would be worse than AT&T. Clearly my review is biased by my extremely poor experience w/ the competition, but :man_shrugging:

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You probably know this, but the international data pricing is fantastic. You pretty much get the same high-speed data rates no matter what country you’re visiting. I am not aware of any other service provider offering something comparable.

By the way—if you don’t need network hopping, it is possible to use Fi on some unsupported devices if you first activate the SIM card on a supported device.

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Lowest cell bills I’ve ever had. They only charge you for what you use. Even fractionally. I have LTE in most places, really only don’t have coverage in deep rural areas.

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Pluses:

  • Dirt cheap bills if you are a low-data user (mine is typically $35 at most)
  • Access to special editions of phones like the Moto X4 that are heavily discounted and have totally clean Android installed, I paid $170 for my X4 after the Fi user discount and the trade-in value of my Nexus 5X

Minuses:

  • The “international travel” support is a hot steaming pile of dogshit. I spent a week visiting a friend in Amsterdam. Phone calling was at best horribly unreliable and I paid by the minute for it, both of which are absolutely unacceptable problems in this day and age in a city as connected as Amsterdam. These issues made it SO much fun to spend my time on the phone trying to get Schwab to address my bank card utterly failing at ATMs in Ireland and Holland.
  • Cell coverage in general is not very good compared to AT&T or Verizon, especially in concrete-dense or rural areas
  • Voice quality with non-Fi users is pretty abysmal even though it’s excellent for between Fi users
  • No iPhone support (obviously)

Overall, if you’re looking to keep your bill low and you don’t need much from your provider, it works great. If what you desire is support for calling from just about anywhere in America and lots of data use, it’s less than ideal. And do NOT rely on it for international travel. Do the smart thing and pick up a prepaid card for use where you go.

In my experience, the main thing the X4 has going for it is that it’s not as terrible as the Nexus 5X. Clean Android is nice, but the version they sold had the lesser amount of memory and they all have meh processors.

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Yeah, but that’s exactly what I want. Honestly, I was perfectly happy with the 5X until its battery life took a major nose dive. I don’t play mobile games or use fancy toys like augmented reality, so I do not need or want to pay for an $800 phone. I can think of a hundred other things I’d rather sink that kind of cash into. Phones are an appliance that I wish to acquire and maintain as cheaply as possible with the minimum possible quantity of aggravating bullshit (e.g., no service provider bloatware or financing rip-offs, providing a decent length of time with guaranteed software and security updates).

Fi is a terrible choice for the power user or the data hog, but if you’re looking for something that provides the basics of connectivity and a decent phone for the absolute minimum, then it’s not a bad selection.

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My issues with the 5X revolved around the battery life and bootlooping on the first one, and again battery life on the second one.

My basic problem with the smartphone market is that the mix of features I feel should be in mid-market phones seem to be exclusively in flagship (i.e. wireless charging) or low-end phones (i.e. removable storage).

I’d emphasize the basics of connectivity aspect myself.

It supports just about any GSM phone, just not the network hopping feature. I know iPhone users on Fi.

As someone who travels quite often, I’ve used it in several countries without any issues and it fared better than my Verizon device did in the same area and that device had to pay for the international use.

Depends on the rural area; I get great coverage in mine (better than the family on at&t) but that’s because of the Sprint portion of the service. If you’re not on a Nexus 6,6p, or Pixel series you get dropped to T-Mobile.
If you are using the network hopping the coverage is all of Sprint, T-Mobile, and (whilst the least of the group) US Cellular and that gets you a pretty good map.

Basically, if you have a Pixel or a Nexus starting with the 6 it’s a way different service.

In short, the entire point of Fi is that, besides for low data users, it’s meant for the phones that support the network hopping. It’s a vastly different performing service at that point.

If @Diplomat or anyone else wants to get a Pixel (or has a Nexus 6/6p) I’d recommend it. If not, then go with a general carrier as you’re just getting rebranded T-Mobile at that point.

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Signed up and never used it. They will not support my Nexus 5 and the 5x is just not something I wish to switch over to nor could one expect they would support much longer.

The very fact that they wish one to always have the latest “premium android phones” is quite off putting especially when they’re going for anywheres between 0.08 to 0.1 BTC.

That’s just the phones that support the full Fi feature set like network hopping (and as a note that Moto x4 is different than the standard one it’s a different radio to support the hopping).
You can always use any GSM phone with Fi, but without the hopping it’s not that worthwhile unless you travel heavily.

If you are going to get Project Fi with an iPhone I don’t see why. You’re essentially paying for just T-Mobile since the other two providers you’re piggybacking only support CDMA which I don’t think SIM card iPhones can do.

not so much… “any gsm phone” Google expressly requests to use thier setup tool from google play to get on boarded. That tool only allows for the premium phones google has allowed.

On the hardware side with devices that support hopping maybe the deciding business factor behind that but it still puts off early adopters like myself that have a long history with google and know very well how they quickly drop support for anything without notice.

As for how they are doing it; well they’re just piggy backing off the three major telcos and tweaking around wifi calling features to simulate full service.

only support CDMA

Not so much, its LTE for VZN and AT&T. With the 5G release it would be purely a Software defined network version of LTE based off open source software.

In a few years, I guess, but for now if you want to use the band-hopping features you need a Fi-endorsed phone, and I somehow have a feeling that Google isn’t going to prioritize building support features for their singular biggest hardware competitor who also makes the lion’s share of its sales through Verizon/AT&T anyway.

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