The best part of this phone is it gets workable signal when others seem not to be able to do so.
Any phone can run apps but most have lousy RF performance. The RF performance of this phone seems to allow it to get a workable signal where other phones do not. I was often in areas which seemed to have no to marginal coverage. Now with this phone they all seem workable. Casually comparing its performance to other kinds of phones in use in the same area by others on various networks, this phone will typically be able to make calls when others cannot. It is clearly better than the phone it replaced. Perhaps it is realted to Motorola being an old line radio company. Who knows. But it is a superior RF performer.
I tested using different SIM cards and it works with both Verizon and T-Mobile (a GSM carrier) networks. This is pretty unusual because most phones are either Verizon or GSM but not both. The phone is advertised as working with ALL US carriers and this seems to be a good claim. Maybe the thing is an SDR? Wouldn’t that be nice.
The wifi section has both 2.4 and 5 Ghz bands. Both work very well. Using a directional beam as the access point I was able to get a workable 2.4 link at about a half mile. If you want to play with this I used a Ubiquiti Powerbeam PBE M2 400 which you can get on Amazon.
The phone is also very stable, having not yet crashed after a few months of use. The phone comes with Android 11, which is very good and it will ask you to upgrade to 12. Both versions are excellent and stable on this phone. There are no hangs or crashes.
The memory holds all the apps I need and is only about 60% used. Battery life can go way past two days if you are just on standby and have all the saver features turned on. The two days is with “normal” use as in my kind of normal use versus playing games or watching video all day. Charging is quite fast and considering you can run a day with far less than 100% battery, the time to refresh the battery is quite quick.
The camera is average, which in my case is good enough, but keep in mind it’s a cell phone. If you want to do real photography get a DSLR.
For the money you will not find a better deal. There is no way I would pay $1200 for a phone especially when I can get 90% of the way there for 5% of the cost.
Mot has really done a great job. I hope they keep up the great work because we need solid, good performing phones at this cost level.
If you want a phone that just works and does so very well and don’t care about fashion, get this.
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