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READ POST #86 on how to get a second year for FREE.
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General navigation is relatively snappy. There's a hint of slowness - it's not lag, just the feeling that the phone is a half-step behind, likely from it's lower-tier Snapdragon 665. Keeping UI animations off in the Developer options helps.
Memory management on the 4GB of ram works well - not too aggressive, only ejects apps when many are running.
Display is good. Good viewing angles, sharp, bright enough for use in the sun.
Dual stereo speakers sound great, no noticeable distortion at full volume, definitely a step up from the single speaker of the G7 power.
Call quality is good, including on speakerphone
Wifi performance is a big improvement over the G7 power. The G has MIMO and conntects at 433 Mbps when standing in front of my Netgear X4S. I get 148 Mbps uploads via iPerf using WiFi Speed Test Pro [google.com]. The G7 doesn't have MIMO and maxes out at 150 Mbps, with effective transfer speeds randomly ranging from 25 Mbps to 65 Mbps.
Bluetooth is an improvement over the G7 power. The G7 would have audio dropouts whenever I handled the phone, such as taking it out of my pocket. Also the G7 is renown for the 2.4 Ghz WiFi slowing down considerably when Bluetooth was active (cross-talk on the antennas) - I don' see a noticeable drop in WiFi perf on the Moto G, as measured by iPerf, on either the 2.4Ghz or 5Ghz bands.
Cell reception is excellent, equivalent to an iPhone 12 I compared against, on both Verizon and T-Mobile networks
Battery life is insanely good, as expected. I'm a very heavy phone users and get nearly two full days between charges.
Moto actions are quite useful and even fun. Double-chop for flashlight is very handy, although it turns itself off after a given number of minutes to avoid battery drain in case you accidentally engage it. Wrist-turn to engage camera is useful as well.
Haven't used the cameras as much but so far they're been passable. I actually like the macro camera, even though many reviewers crap on it for having such low resolution. Offers some unique photo shooting, including shallow depth-of-field.
Rear fingerprint reader is placed perfectly and reads instantly and 100% of the time.
USB transfer performance over MTP is slow - took 28 minutes to transfer 15GB to a mounted SD card. It's much faster over ADB though - around 7 minutes for the same 15GB transfer.
General Android tips:
Use the Brave Browser [google.com]. It's a source clone of Chrome but with an ad-blocker built-in, including ad blocking for YouTube videos. The killer feature is background video playback, which works with YouTube and even if you lock the phone. Allows you to listen to YouTube videos on the go without the battery drain of running the display and without worrying about inadvertent screen taps when locking the phone.
Enable the Accessibility Menu (Settings -> Accessibility -> Accessibility Menu). Gesture to open is two finger swipe from bottom of the phone (when using Gesture navigation rather than 3-button navigation). This gives you access to volume and screen locking without having to hit the physical buttons.
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I bought this phone in unlocked form over the holiday season for $179 (Amazon and Best Buy had it for multiple periods). Tracfone had an independent offer for anyone buying any smartphone $100+ on Amazon and signing up for any of their service. If you did so you got a $100 rebate from them to cover the cost of a phone. So I bought the phone, Tracfone SIM, and a $15 30-day plan for $179 + 1 + 15 -100 = $95. Only other requirement was to activate the SIM card, but no obligation to continue service. So if you are interested in the whole package offered here including the year of service a pretty good deal. If you just want the phone, not as much at least compared to the holiday season.
I now put my phone in airplane mode with wifi turned on whenever the wifi network is availble just to be safe and periodically turn on the cell plan to send/receive text msgs.
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"WiFi Calling doesn't give you the ability to make free calls and texts. (Read further along to learn how to do this with Google Voice.) You are still charged the normal rate for calls and texts by Tracfone."
LOL, TF promotes wifi calling as a Free feature that incurs no other costs (other than your minutes). . .so not a free feature.
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