Wednesday, February 20, 2019

Wrapping it up with FreedomPop

A while back, I was researching cell phone service for a lady from the church. When I last mentioned it, she still hadn't made up her mind. I figured she'd go with Xfinity Mobile, but she instead upgraded her AT&T flip phone to an inexpensive Samsung smartphone.

During that research, I became much more aware of what options there were for Android devices. I even decided to get an Android device, which I mentioned some time back.

I still have my iPhone with stuff for my day job on it. But I have my Android phone for stuff like ... well, whatever it is I do when I'm not doing my day job. I have been using FreedomPop service with it. That was one of the services I checked into for the church lady. Commenter Slapout was also using FreedomPop, and I need to see how things are going with him. For me? Well, I'm ready to wrap it up with them.

Their free service has minimal data. If you don't use much data, that's not a problem. But, I'm one that uses data. So, I went with one of their special deals, and tried a 2 GB data plan. That was more than I would use, so some rolled over every month. I've got lots available. Well, relatively speaking. Several months. I don't often pull out the phone and use data when I'm away from a reliable WiFi source, so I don't really use all that much. Just more than the free plan.

Anyway, the price is going up. For the next six months, it works out to a little over $20/month. That's not bad, to be sure. But, the price is more in line with traditional cell phone services. And with traditional cell service you don't have to use a special phone or text app like you do with FreedomPop.

I could drop to a 1 GB plan for less than half that, so I might go that route. But if not, I'll be writing about Google Fi in a future post. But, I'm planning on dropping my paid FreedomPop service. Funny enough, I still have a free FreedomPop service. I ended up ordering two FreedomPop SIMs a while back, so I put one in my Moto e4 -- the one that's now a paid service -- and another -- the still free service -- in an old Samsung Galaxy S-something.

The downside of the free service is that if you don't use your phone every so often, they'll suspend service. No charge to restart it, but it is a pain. And you lose your number. So, there's that. I'm not faulting them for it. I mean, it's free, right? And if I kept the number and never used it, they'd be carrying it on the books and I'd just be tying up an otherwise useful number. So, that's not a complaint on my part, just a recognition of the facts.

So, after a year of FreedomPop, my thoughts? It's ... okay.

It runs on AT&T if you bring your own unlocked GSM phone (I did). If you use one of theirs, it's a Sprint CDMA phone. And Sprint doesn't have good service where I live. Neither does T-Mobile, for that matter. But I get good Verizon and AT&T service. So, the BYOP (Bring Your Own Phone) option works for me. Oh, and they are all refurbished CDMA Sprint phones. There are some Samsung Galaxy S7 phones, and some Motorola Moto X phones, so there are some good phones, just no new phones.

If you have a good quality phone, there's never any reason to call customer service. I've never had to deal with customer service, but I've read some stories. But, from my experience, I have no experience. I chalk that up to having a good phone. Which is why I chose the BYOP option. I knew the quality of the phone going in. It was a good phone and everything worked. So, no customer service calls were necessary.

Let's see. What else? Oh, yeah. The apps. Using their VOIP service, you go through their own phone and text apps. You can't use the default apps on your Android (or iPhone; I tried that, too). Which is a pain to get used to. But, the stuff works most of the time. Yeah, I had a couple of times where I couldn't place a call or get a text. But, I've run into that with Verizon on an iPhone X. So, this is no worse than that. Not a deal-breaker.

So, bottom line. Would I recommend one? Maybe. If you want a cheap service and can put up with ads (the free one is ad-supported), and don't use much data, this is actually not a bad way to go. If you want all the bells and whistles, this ain't for you.

Whether or not I'll keep the paid service, I don't really know. I'm keeping the free just to have a backup. I've set an alert on my phone to remind me to place a call every so often, so I don't lose the number (again) with the free service.

But, if I do go drop the paid service and go elsewhere, it'll be something around the same price, and that works more like a standard cell phone service, with the default phone and text apps and everything.

I know you can hardly wait to find out what I'm gonna do.

And we'll close on that cliffhanger.

1 comment:

  1. You might want to try Total Wireless. It's a little more expensive, $35/month for unlimited talk and text and 5gb data, but it works on the Verizon network and you can bring any verizon phone, old or new. The only drawback I've seen is that they don't allow wifi calling. They do offer a bit of extra data if you pre pay direct or get refills from Walmart.

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