My First Week with a Republic Wireless Phone
So I'm rounding out week one with a Republic Wireless phone. For the most part, it's been a very positive experience. There are a few things I'd like to point out:
If you choose to go with the Motorola Defy XT (your only choice at the moment) get at least an 8gb micro sd card to replace the 4gb one the phone comes with.
You'll want to install most of your apps on the micro sd card as the phone won't be able to hold much of anything.
All of the apps I tested the phone with worked well including Ingress, Bejeweled, 1Password, Evernote, VEVO, Slacker Radio, Waze, Beejive, Facebook and Google+ (obviously).
Cellular calls worked great and without issue. Callers reported clarity was more than acceptable.
My bluetooth headset attached without issue.
The phone jumped between Wifi and Cellular very quickly and did not take an extraordinary amount of time to reconnect as I went through tunnels on the BART.
HOWEVER....
There are some concerns with WiFi calling. I'm trying to debug the issue properly so I know what actions to take. That being said, I've mentioned the issue in the forums and Republic Wireless is currently still BETA so they are working the kinks out. Some of the commenters have said it completely destroys the call, while others say it's just an annoyance. My personal experiences have been that the caller cannot hear me at all or have reported the call quality to be "very broken". As per a suggestion, the router I'm using was upgraded and I'll have to retest and repost. FWIW, I did notice today that when I got closer to my home, the phone jumped to the WiFi network and quality did not diminish.
UPDATE:
Having officially tested two networks by leaving myself messages, I can say that all calls appeared to be clear. The two calls that I made through the Airport Wireless network with Comcast as the ISP were a bit worse off but not terrible. The next step will be to test these calls with another individual(s), preferably on each of the major networks and see what their opinion is of the call quality.
