Update: August 2016
I’ve used this phone in France and Norway as if I were at home. Calls and internet use were crystal clear. It was a good investment and I’ll stick with this service as long as they continue to provide good service while traveling.
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As a traveler one of my “must dos” is to let my family know that I’ve reached my destination safely, and to keep in contact with them especially if I’m traveling without my husband. That’s always been at odds with my desire to keep my mobile phone expenses low, and my weariness of contract plans.
Over the past 7 years I’ve gone through a few providers with one of the last being Virgin Mobile. Virgin Mobile service was great, and I stuck with them for about 5 years, however as I was no longer grandfathered in to my previous plan and I wanted to try phones that they didn’t offer a couple of months ago I decided that it was time to switch.
Couple the above information with the fact that I was unable to use this phone overseas, my go-to for keeping in touch was Skype. As long as I had a good WiFi connection, I’d take out my phone or tablet to make calls and send texts.
For a month I tried FreedomPop, the service was decent for the area that I live in, but it still didn’t serve my needs for an overseas phone.
Introduce Project Fi from Google. Project Fi is Google’s new phone service that usege $500 phone and all. The 32GB is $500, the 64 is $550 but at the time I ordered it was unavailable, so I went with the 32GB. If you don’t want to pay the $500 up front, there’s an option of s Sprint, T-Mobile networks as well as WiFi to provide inexpensive mobile phone service. The best thing about it was that using Project Fi and the Nexus 6 phone that works with the plan, I’d be able to use it overseas. That’s great you say, but how much is it? That’s the best part. $30 a month allows me 1 GB of data as well as unlimited talk and text. $30 a month! Each GB of data is an extra $10 and you’re refunded for data that you don’t use. How many countries does it work in? Over 120!
Once I’d received my invitation, I’d put off signing up for about 10 days, then I took the plunpaying $20 a month for 2 years with no interest. I can use my phone as a mifi device and other devices to tether to it as share my data too. A great option to have, especially on road trips. There’s a 13MP front facing camera, so if I happen to not take my DSLR with me, I know that I have a way to still take great pictures and it’ll will be nice backup.
You can find out more information here: https://fi.google.com/about/plan/
So far so good. It’s 6″, so I’d label it a Phablet. It’s bigger than what I’m used to carrying, but it is light weight and I have to see that I really like it. As an early user they sent Project Fi package that included earphones with a port for a microphone, a phone case and a 6000 mAH portable charger with 2 USB and a Micro USB port.
So far, I’m more than satisfied. The sound is clear, I have a phone big enough to play games on, and most importantly when I visit Thailand this autumn, I’ll have an easy way to call my family and tell them that I’m doing just fine. 🙂
