Visible R2 is now $19 without service or trade-in requred

If you are interested in using your own sim card instead of Visible, here is the unlock status of the phone,
Verizon or Verizon MVNO: Everything works.
Everybody else (ATT/TMobile etc) in the US : Data/MMS/SMS work. NO CALLS.
Calling status on oversea carriers: UNKOWN until someone actually try and report it.

See specs here https://www.zteusa.com/visible-r2.html

Install TWRP, remove encryption, and get Magisk on the Visible R2 by FEGuy [xda-developers.com]



It's not a terrific phone, but it's not terrible either, especially for the price. Don't forget the extra $20 off for referral. it's against the rules to post the referral codes on Slickdeals but you can find them on Reddit [visible.com] You can put together a pretty sweet deal. And the phone IS unlocked...

Caution Buying - THEY DON'T HAVE ENOUGH COMPETENT CUSTOMER SERVICE AGENTS - BILLING IS A MESS - NOT WORTH THE HASSLE AT ALL IF YOU USE THE PHONE FOR BUSINESS OR IF YOU NEED 100% RELIABILITY. REMEMBER YOU WERE WARNED!
PORTING IS EITHER VERY BAD OR WORKS GREAT.... IT'S ALMOST A COINFLIP.... IT IS POSSIBLE TO LOSE YOUR PHONE NUMBER IN THEIR PORTING LIMBO..... MORE LIKELY IF THERE IS A PROBLEM WITH THE AUTOMATIC NUMBER PORTING SYSTEM, EXPECT 5-14 DAYS FOR THE PORT TO COMPLETE

Visible customer service is overwhelmed because of the deals they are offering, can take hours to reply to you.

Service is 4g LTE only. All calls are VOLTE only.

Video streaming is throttled as well as tethering. Just an fyi

Visible also has problems [reddit.com] validating addresses [twitter.com] and they have no interest in fixing these issues.


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Update: This phone is not eligible to the $100 promotion on-going right now.

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XDA thread containing the stock firmware and further technical discussion here: https://forum.xda-developers.com/...e-t3905898

Some possible drawbacks of the phone,
The firmware on the R2 has a major flaw for the storage. It attributes 9GB for system partition and another 2GB will be used by google apps and built-in stock apps. Those built-in apps were supposed to installed in the system partition but once you turn on the phone and let it sit for one or two days, they will be transferred to user storage, in stead of staying in the 9GB system storage partition. As a result, there will be actually only 5GB (16GB - 9GB system - 2GB built-in apps) left for the user. For other entry-level phones from Moto or LG with 16GB internal storage, the system partition is only around 5-6 GB and there will be 9-10GB usable storage left.
The reason that the ZTE visible R2 attributes 9GB for system partition is that the Visible R2 is basically a rebranded version of the Chinese version ZTE Blade A4 A0722, which has 32GB/64GB internal storage and ZTE is lazy to change the system partition size for the Visible R2 16GB internal storage.

You will get forced update even without activation on visible. There is no way to turn off auto update even if you turn off automatic system update" in developer settings. Forced automatic system update is a downside for me.

Another downside is that this phone has only English and Spanish. You can't add other languages if you need.


This phone does not have FM Radio and does not seem to have a chip either. I know it probably does not matter to anyone but just putting it out there as I would have liked FM Radio. IT DOES have an FM radio. If you enable EMode, there is an FM radio test and with headphones, it does work.
I did find an app called NextRadio that can work if and only if your phone has a FM chip (but no stock radio app). Tried that app on this and it was a No Go.

This phone has only 2.4GHz wifi, no 5 GHz wifi.

Link to this Wiki