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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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242 Comments
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You can't use the Tracfone phone number without using minutes.
This moto G should replace, correct?
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Mode: CDMA
I'm assuming from the conversations here this will work with GSM just fine right? You would think they would actually maybe list it lol
"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.
They can also purchase call time, texts, and data separately, $10 for 500 minutes, $10 for 1GB, and so on. The '500MB free when you purchase 1GB' coupon is available frequently, making it $10 per 1500MB.
Mode: CDMA
I'm assuming from the conversations here this will work with GSM just fine right? You would think they would actually maybe list it lol
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Hmm. I haven't opened the two I bought yet - was waiting until our current year of service expires in about 4 months. We have the Tracfone version, not unlocked.
Is there some sort of "plain Jane" (vanilla) version of Android that we can put on this thing which would get rid of any bloatware? Or would I need to wait a full year of use on Tracfone to unlock before we could do this?
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