* Activating the Fi S24 phone
When you get the phone:
1. The SIM is already installed in the phone, although the phone box is sealed.
2. Turn on the phone, connect it to WiFi and log into the same Google account that was used to purchase the phone.
3. Download and install the Fi app from Google Play Store.
4. Leave WiFi ON. Run the Fi app. It will insist that you turn Data ON. Go ahead and turn Data ON. It might use a few MB of Data before switching to WiFi. If FI charges you for that Data at all, it will be 1-3 cents added to the 2nd bill.
5. Go through the activation process with the app which will transfer your Fi service from yourl old phone to the S24.
6. Your S24 phone should be activated on Fi then. Make some test calls/texts to make sure that the phone is working on Fi.
* Tracking Your Promo Discount
Log into your Fi account on the web site. There's a countdown in your Billing-->Fi Savings-->In Progress that shows how many more days your Fi service has to remain active. About 24 hrs after you activated the Fi SIM, the In Progress Tracker should show a checklist with entries like: Bought a phone, Got a discount, Activated the SIM, Stay xxx more days on Fi. Make sure the "Activate the SIM" entry is checkmarked and it shows 120 days to go. Then for a few days after that, keep checking the In Progress to make sure the countdown is decreasing each day. The countdown is updated at the same time each day (around the time of day that you activated the Fi SIM).
* How to Verify that your S24 promo was Earned
There's a countdown in your Billing-->Fi Savings-->In Progress that shows how many more days your Fi service has to remain active. The countdown will never say zero day. On the 120th day, it will stay at "1 more day". On the morning of the 121st day, the countdown should say "Stayed (past tense) active on Fi for 120 days in a row". Then later in the day, the In Progress column disappears, and the promo discount gets moved to the Earned column. At that time or later, it's safe to Cancel or Pause your Fi service.
You can use this Date Calculator: https://www.timeanddate
Enter your activation date as the Start Date, select Add 121 days and it'll show the date when it's safe to cancel/pause your Fi service.
* How to Cancel your Fi service
In your Fi account, click on Account-->Your Plan, scroll down until you see "Leave Google Fi". Click on that and follow the on-screen instructions. You'll have the options to Let Go your Fi phone number, or Transfer To Another Provider. (There used to be an option to port it back to Google Voice, but I think it's no longer available). If you choose to let go your Fi number, your Fi service will be cancelled IMMEDIATELY. If you choose to port out, your Fi service will remain active until your Fi number has been ported out to another provider.
* How to Pause your Fi service
In your Fi account, click on Account-->Your Plan, scroll down until you see "Pause Service". Click on that and follow the on-screen instructions. Your Fi service will be paused and Automatically Resumed after 90 days, unless you cancel it before 90 days are up. Once it's Resumed, you can leave it Active, or Cancel it, or Pause again (I don't know how many times you can Pause). If you have a lot of remaining referral Fi credit (which is not refundable), you can choose Pause instead of Cancel to wait and see if there will be new Fi promotions in the future to use up your Fi credit.
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Steps I took as a former Fi subscriber to get this deal: https://slickdeals.net/forums/showpost.php?p=
Strong recommendation: For people who activate service on a BYOD device to become an existing customer, wait a minimum of 24 hours (recommended 48 hours) before purchasing the S24. Those who activate and purchase the same day usually have major issues. The countdown timer will not be triggered and you will have no choice but to forfeit the discount or return the phone. You can try to contact support and ask to escalate to a specialist which may or may not have success and will likely eat up your return window.
For those that purchased same day, it seems that given early data points including mine that
Fi has manually approved the promo after escalating. Unknown if this will consistently be successful by others in future, though.
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Top Comments
Thought it's a 24 Month Bill credit?
"Get reimbursed over 24 months
Receive $27.09 off each bill for 24 months
The credit is tied to the person who activated the device"
Sorry for the ignorance but I'm new to Google Fi deals!
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I believe multiple eSims can be stored, but only one can be active. So its like having multiple ICCIDs tied to one IMEI. You activate Fi eSim, you shut it off via toggle in Sim Manager, and then you add other eSim. If you want to go back to Fi , you toggle the other sim off and the Fi on. Phone will likely reboot in between
Exception: if you activate during the last 3 calendar days of each month, billing will start about 3-5 days later.
So these phones are going to arrive probably Feb 10 give or take, ironically the shortest month but 2024 is a leap year. So 120 days in mid June. Fi will see lots of cancellations then, lol.
But Junky meant that you have to be paying for service now, before the phone arrives to be an active customer. I assumed you have to maintain 120 days from the day you activate the s24
Oh , and you can easily net $400 for a Note 20 Ultra in fair condition on Swappa so your price is $600 + $400 = $1000
I'd like to use my visible plus esim account for data, voice and text. Maybe I should just sock drawer the Google Fi psim like I did for the s23 ultra deal last year.
is there any value to keeping the Google Fi as a backup sim if visible service is poor in a given area etc ?
I actually think the former is a good strategy. I think Visible which is based on Verizon and Fi which is based on T-Mobile will defintely give you different service in different areas. However, you can only have one eSim active at a time. If you wanted to keep Fi for backup you would have to toggle in sim manager all the time and Samsung will force you to reboot when you change Sims - there is a workaround to disable the forced reboot (disabling a process called cidmanager using ADB) , so the easier solution if you want to have both sims active is to have one of them on physical sim
I am probably going into too much detail but the problem with dual sim in the US is that carriers have used their influence to have Samsung cripple functionality. The key missing feature is that you can't set default sim for text and data, there is a workaround to set default sim for calls using Google Dialer. There used to be a workaround for sms and data however it was plugged in Android 14. There is still a workaround but it involves changing CSC and using samfw tool which some think is riskware
Ok, if you want 1TB great however this year Google Fi's trade in values suck and Samsung's is better. However, I still think when you do the math, Google Fi is the better pricing , comparing apples for apples, even if you sold your old phone to BuyBackBoss for dirt cheap, if you did not want the hassle of selling it privately
• Signed up as new user
• Ported my primary number over as I want to use the fi service
• 3 days later my bill was in finalizing state, still was seeing the 24 months rebate instead of instant
• I got tired of waiting so ended up ordering the phone with the 24 month rebate
• Order got canceled because my payment dint go through. But I couldn't re-order as the offer wasn't available on my account anymore
• Decided to wait for a day and the next day I saw the instant rebate 😊offer in my account
Thanks all for the discussion and guidance here.
• Signed up as new user
• Ported my primary number over as I want to use the fi service
• 3 days later my bill was in finalizing state, still was seeing the 24 months rebate instead of instant
• I got tired of waiting so ended up ordering the phone with the 24 month rebate
• Order got canceled because my payment dint go through. But I couldn't re-order as the offer wasn't available on my account anymore
• Decided to wait for a day and the next day I saw the instant rebate 😊offer in my account
Thanks all for the discussion and guidance here.
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Register as a new customer
Wait about 4 days for your bill to be Final
Now, you are an existing customer
Get the deal
Now, the deadline to do this would be the end of this week, Friday.
After a few days, I'll add all that info to the Wiki of this deal.
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