*I was sent a smartphone and 3 months of phone service in exchange for this post.
I got my first cell phone in my early teens and it was a prepaid phone. You had to buy plastic cards with more minutes and they cost $1 per minute, so a 30 minute card cost $30. Then, if you weren’t in certain geographic locations (which my house, school and basically entire town were not in the special zone) then you used up two minutes per 1 actual minute, so $30 only lasted you 15 minutes!
I don’t think I ever purchased the cards to refill the time on that phone and I had an awful opinion of prepaid phones for years afterwards until about a year and a half ago when a few of my family members had switched to prepaid and had discussed how prepaid phones now have unlimited plans for a set rate each month – and that rate was about $20 less per month than I was used to paying for my limited-minute/text plan that had more than double the time and texts that I used each month. So, eventually we decided to switch and we haven’t looked back since. The service that we have had is great and we love paying less.
I recently read about how Republic Wireless is a prepaid phone company that offers unlimited data, talk and text for as low as $19 a month per person. Based on my recent experience with other companies who offer prepaid service with unlimited plans, I knew it was possible for prepaid companies to have great service but this was less than 1/2 the price I was paying at “the other prepaid phone company” so I have to admit that I was worried that it was too good to be true.
Both of these pictures were taken outside with the camera on the back of the phone.
I was recently sent a Motorola Defy XT phone and have been using the Republic Wireless service on it for a month now. I live in a fairly rural area and seems how I didn’t know anyone around me who uses Republic Wireless, I was worried that they might not have coverage in my area but I haven’t lost signal once so far. Republic Wireless is a hybrid system, meaning they have regular cell phone service but they also allow you to connect to wifi hotspots to use service even in areas where they don’t have coverage. To date, I haven’t set up wifi usage on my phone yet and haven’t had any issues with service. There seem to be some misconceptions out there that Republic Wireless requires (or suggests?) that users use wifi instead of their regular cell service at least 60% of the time. This is not the case. Users are free to only use the regular cell service if they wish, or they can use wifi, it’s completely up to you. In areas that do not have regular service, you can still use your phone if you connect to a wifi hot spot, but that is completely optional.
I’ll admit that we do fairly limited traveling – we stick to about five towns surrounding our home but I haven’t lost coverage. I haven’t had any dropped calls or static during calls and I haven’t noticed any delays while texting. Again, I have yet to connect to wifi service so even if I had trouble with service, I could have connected to a wifi hotspot (if there was one near me) to use my phone. I guess I shouldn’t be that surprised after looking at their coverage map. I live in Michigan, by the way.
I’m not a big user of apps or internet on my phone even though I’ve owned smartphones for over 10 months now, so I can’t really say much about the apps or internet but what little I have used the internet it’s been okay. Not super fast, but I wasn’t used to fast internet service on my smartphone with my other prepaid phone company either.
Both of these pictures were taken inside. The left was taken with the forward facing camera at night with indoor lights on. The right photo was taken in the afternoon with the backwards facing camera.
The phone has a camera in front (so you can take photos of yourself) and a photo in back. There is a noticeable difference in quality depending on which camera you use (the one that is in back is nicer) and outdoor lighting works best but both cameras are okay on quality in my opinion, for being phone cameras. The photos in this post were taken by the phone.
The only problem or downside that I have experienced is that when I go to share a photo from the phone’s gallery to my own email address, the photos never show up as an email. The phone doesn’t give me an error message and appears to have sent them but they never actually get sent. However, I am easily able to connect the phone to a PC with a USB cord and transfer the photos that way so it’s not a big deal for me personally.
I’m not a heavy phone user – I send out maybe 200 texts a month and spend about 300 talk-minutes a month. The only time I really use apps would be to play games while in a waiting room. I use the internet if I’m not at home and I need some small bit of information fast such as a businesses address or phone number but that’s about it. So while I don’t really require a whole lot from a phone company, I do need things like reliable service and an affordable price and Republic Wireless definitely meets those needs.
Overall, I haven’t noticed any real differences (positive OR negative) between my previous prepaid phone company and Republic Wireless, and because Republic Wireless is cheaper, it just makes sense for me to go with Republic Wireless.
They only offer one phone and two plans. Though, they are currently working on adding two 4g devices to their service. The plans are both unlimited talk text and data but the prices vary depending on how much you pay for the phone upfront. If you pay the full $249 for the phone, your service will be $19 a month. Or, if you’d rather get the phone for $99, you can pay $29 a month instead. Even the $29 a month plan is almost half of what the prepaid phone company competitors in my area charge for unlimited plans so both are truly a steal.
Of course, you might be hesitant like me because of the low prices. To combat that, Republic Wireless offers a money back guarantee so that you can return the phone and get your money back (except the cost of shipping) if you’re unhappy with the phone or the service.
Connect: You can connect with Republic Wireless on Facebook and Twitter.
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Hi there! I am Emily Evert, the owner of Emily Reviews. I am 28 and live in a small town in Michigan with my boyfriend Ryan and our two pugs. I have a large family and I adore my nieces and nephews. I love reading memoirs, and learning about child development and psychology. I love watching The Game of Thrones, Teen Mom, Sister Wives and Veep. I like listening to Jason Isbell, John Prine, and other alt-country or Americana music. I created Emily Reviews as a creative outlet to share my life and the products that I love with others.
This post currently has 19 responses.
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That is a deal and I did not even know they existed! Pre-paid is the way to go!!! Thank you for sharing your experience 🙂
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Thanks, I am collecting this info for when I have to get a cell for my son. I am 1 year and 4 months away form that (middle school).
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I am being forced off of the $3.34 a month nextel boost mobile plan I’ve been on for almost 8 years on June 30. I find Virgin Mobile’s $35 monthly unlimited to be too expensive for someone that uses 10-15 minutes per month. The other option, AT&T GoPhone, charges like there is no tomorrow on texting and data on their $10 a month plan. So I’m very intrigued by Republic Wireless, but I have a question for someone that has used it:
My understanding is that unlike prepaid/month-to-month competitors, Republic Wireless’s $19 monthly advertised quote does not include taxes. What have you actually been paying each month?
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coco
$21 and change. It is a steal!
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emmy
So far, I haven’t been billed as my trial was compensated by the company. Have you considered doing a pay per minute plan? I know there are some out there that charge .10 per minute and .10 per text so if you were using 15 minutes a month that would only be $1.50 a month, though I believe most plans like that require you to buy a $20 card at a time and then after 3 months the minutes expire if not used, but that would still average out to $20 each 3 months or about $7 a month.
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Keep in mind that it’s a hybrid service, meaning you are expected to have wi-fi available most of the time. The idea is that calls go over VOIP as much as possible with the Sprint phone service filling in when wi-fi isn’t available.
I work from home and have had the service for about a year (I was in the beta program), so I have wi-fi available. Works great for me. I also find myself frequenting places with free wi-fi more and more…
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The useage map above shows the dark green spots as areas where you dont’ need wifi, and the light green areas where you’ll need wifi to have service. I live in Michigan which is one of the better coverage states but I haven’t set up wifi to my phone yet and have been using it for 5-6 weeks without ever having to use wifi and I haven’t ever had service issues. So at least for me in my area, it’s not true that you have to rely on wifi most of the time.
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Read your agreement again. The reason the price is so low is that customers agree to use wi-fi much of the time (I believe it’s a 70% target. the last 7 days mine has been 92%). If you login to your account, you’ll see your usage. As far as I know, no one has been kicked off yet for not using wi-fi enough, but it only stands to reason it will come.
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Hmm, interesting. I’m not sure what you mean by ‘agreement’ – perhaps I didn’t get something that you did seems how I was sent the phone that already had service for me (I didn’t “sign up”) because I was partnering with them on a review? Does this agreement that you’re referring to say they’d like you to use wifi 70% of the time or that you are required to? I don’t see anything on the link you mentioned that says it either way. There is a graphic that shows a guy using wifi and it says 60% but it still doesn’t really say “please use wifi 60% of the time” or that you have to, either?
I’ll contact the person I have been working with and ask for clarification on this and if I hear back I’ll update my blog post as I certainly have no intention of misleading people to use their service in a way that is other than intended but I haven’t seen anything about this and like I said, I never set up the wifi usage and haven’t had any issues so between that & not reading anything that told me to do otherwise, I just assumed it was fine.
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carlitin
Good info. Can anybody tell me if they are adding new phones and if you can keep your existing number? Thanks in advance.
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Hi Carlitin,
I just emailed the representative who I worked for with your questions and will come comment here once I hear back with answers to your questions. 🙂 -
Hello,
I heard back from my contact at republic wireless who said that you can keep your number, to do so you will have to select “port your number” when signing up for their service and you’ll have to provide your current providers account number and pin number. There is typically a 24 hour wait period before you can get service started when you are trying to keep your phone number.Also, she said they are working on adding two new 4g phones but she said it usually takes a while for phones to get certified and thoroughly tested, etc. She didn’t give me an estimated date of arrival.
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beclu727
They only offer the defy xt right now. No word on other phones. I transferred my number from my previous, very expensive provider.
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I checked and the original target wi-fi offload was 60%. Check with your Republic Wireless contact and see if that’s still so. Judging by community comments, keeping a high offload is still the goal. There’s an app that can be installed on your phone to keep track.
They say “unlimited” but the whole point of the hybrid phone is to make use of wi-fi when possible to keep the cost low.
I love mine. For anyone with access to wi-fi at least part of the time it’s ideal.
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Hi Richard,
I just heard back from my Republic Wireless contact who said that there aren’t any limitations for how often users “should” or “have to” use wifi vs the regular cellular plan, so people like me who opt to never connect to wifi don’t have to. However, people who live in areas with poor or no coverage may “have to” switch to wifi if they want to use their phone in a bad area, but the company doesn’t require anyone to use any level of wifi. She said that their average customer uses wifi 60% of the time which is where that number comes from, but that’s just a statistical average for their customers, not a requirement or even suggested usage.She said that they do reserve the right to ban users who abuse their service but this statement doesn’t refer to wifi vs regular cell service usage, instead it would be things like using your phone to power an internet connected machine. She said that to the best of her knowledge, they have never banned users from their service to date.
Thanks for bringing up these interesting points so that I can get myself more educated on the topic, I’ll be updating my post so that I can better inform people about these details, as I can see how easily some users or people considering the switch might be confused about these important details.
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Wow! What a bargain! I’m still on an old fashioned contractual plan, but am definitely going to take a long look at prepaid when my contract expires.