I have had this phone functioning for a full 24 hours and have gone through one full battery cycle.

Battery life is a full-on active day of full-on use, but you will still have to charge the phone once a night.

This is a carry and use all day, charge at night sort of phone.

Battery life is slightly better than the Moto G, which is understandable as the Moto E is starting up with a fresher, slightly larger more modern battery.   Should have better use life as the Moto E battery is slightly bigger, but so far nothing earth shaking shows up in these early results  --  just a good full day of use will run you down to about 25% left on the battery.

Moto G would have gotten lower sooner and you would have had to use the charger that you carry with you whenever you got a battery alert.   The Moto E never dipped down that far.   So, you may get to stop carrying a charger with you all the time ......

I had auto-installed a Flashlight app from my Google Drive Moto G backup.   Before un-installing it I gave it a click "on" just to see what happened.   There is no flash on the Moto E (Moto E camera can work without it, Moto E has a more modern camera sensor and better light enhancing camera software).  I expected a fail to take place on this impromptu app trial.  Not so, the app put the entire front face of the 4.5" display on "full strength glow light mode" and that makes the flashlight app worth keeping as that "large glow light" is perfectly OK for fumbling with keys, etc.

Kudos to the Moto E for being a 2 year more improved more modern product than the Moto G it size replaces.   Triple kudos for FreedomPOP for selling this good of a phone for only $49.

People who are used to and like larger phones will of course buy a similar sized product, and their math will be affected by the higher cost they pay, but anyone not on one of the low cost leaders (Republic Wireless and FreedomPOP) should consider moving at least one (1) phone over to check it out.

Be aware that you are getting a full set of basic services from Republic Wireless, but RW is all done respectably, cleanly, honestly and relatively well.   Folks generally like RW as a company.   (duh, it is a Google offshoot with Google core values, what did you expect?)

In contrast FreedomPOP is much more of a raw, bare bones thing -- you have to like it for what it is cost-wise as their software and their customer service IS GOING TO IRRITATE YOU.  

Most of what has been outstanding about FreedomPOP has been the Moto E phone (and face it, most phones do shine compared against their two generations back great great grandparents).  

So far the worst things about FreedomPOP "free phone" are the 2G Sprint cell voice support and the unfinished, slightly raw nature of the FreedomPOP voice over IP software and all the BS misleading FreedomPOP web pages trying to upsell you all the time.

EXAMPLE:  $3 a month buys FreedomPOP Premium Voice, an item that FP owners can't agree even works at all and those that say it does work say it isn't ready for prime time yet.   This supposedly plugs in normal Sprint voice calls over modern Sprint towers .... kinda, partially.   Results seem to vary strongly by phone and by local tower type.

The stock FREE voice over wifi certainly isn't the best, it always sounds rain-barrel and has scratchy static background noises.   Voice calls are the worst feature of the phone right now.

Next, between spotty 2G Sprint tower placements and lack of wifi away from town, you aren't always in a place to make or take a voice call with this free phone.   It greatly resembles an old Sprint 2G phone in this aspect -- so you will have to train your contact folks to text you for a call back.   Or have an ongoing text to text conversation like all the modern kids do all the time.

Would I put my wife on this phone?    No, not right now.

She talks a lot, carries on long conversations while moving down the road in her car and does lots of other mostly verbal/email related items.  She likes her Republic Wireless phone just fine  ..... and face it $12.24 isn't a big monthly price to pay to keep her life smooth and her feeling happy.

    ...... if Momma ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy ......

I think early on Republic Wireless very wisely limited their efforts to the Motorola line of phone products intentionally just to get a consistent phone feature set to program against and to get a GOOD well accepted phone at a low price point.  

This was a natural to them as Google owned Motorola back then and these Republic Wireless people all started out working at Google working full time on these very ideas before taking the low end phone ideas out into the real world as an offshoot company.

Quite differently, FreedomPOP came from the low end router ISP side of things and is a quite old company, actually.  Their first product was a free dial-up ISP and that led them over the years into making a free cellular router based hot spot (and they still sell that one today as a part of their business).  

Phones are a brand new thing to FreedomPOP, but it looks to be becoming quite a large thing for the folks over at FreedomPOP.  Got tons of last year's phones to dump off for cheap, including a large batch of Windows phones from what I read last night.   MS needs that really big FP sell-off / dump off sales figure for their next quarter's Wall Street Required "uptick", so a very large MS "investment" came FreedomPOPs way to make sure the programming happens very very quickly, too.  

Sorta desperate, huh?  

FreedomPOP does like to jump around all over the place all the time and it now tries to get funding directly from the big phone makers to include their "slightly out of date" dump off phones as the FreedomPOP's phone of the week.  The result of this "endless fire sale" mentality is that the FP implementation of features feels like a patchwork of stuff that was written to hit different vendors at different points of time.

FreedomPOP is growing rapidly right now, outstrippping its infastructure and churning its customer base just about every year or so -- but it is making low end low cost progress much quicker than the others.

Google wants FreedomPOP out there disrupting and moving and shaking.  Google's Fi program is intended to create a whole sea of FreedomPOPs, so they can disrupt the cell phone industry and quintuple the number of Android phones and people their ads can reach.

FreedomPOP seems to want to stay at the very bottom level of phone services and attempts seriously to be the "totally free" FreedomPOP mentality we all remember from their free router dial-up roots.    

They are Google's perfect mover and shaker, to agitate the monolithic cell phone industry and get some motion up out of that settled mud down on the bottom  .....  FreedomPOP on the very bottom, Republic Wireless in the layer above that and Google Fi up on top acting as a Switzerland type hands off voice over Wifi technical 'supporter'.

SO ....  FreedomPOP is staying afloat while putting out a totally free service .....  so they have to make their money on the front end from Sprint and the phone makers somehow.    Arranging to buy and move the builders dead phones is what they are doing right now.

How long this will last?   Who knows?    



At least four - five months or until the MS money runs out, I hope.      

    I gots me a payback period to make you know ......

I spent some time today working on the "echo issue."    Moto E has a known "echo issue" that is based upon the phone's dual microphone noise cancellation system and, ironically, the use of the current crop of protective cases with tiny tiny mic openings.

The most popular fix is to open up the bottom side "mouth" microphone opening in the actual Moto E rim to main chassis area and matching it completely to an enlarged case opening (careful cutting & scraping with an X-acto Knife) and then putting a single layer of scotch tape over the up top camera/speaker area noise cancellation microphone.

These steps improved the quality of my voice as received by the other caller.  It greatly reduced them hearing their own voice back as a low level feedback effect.  The camera/speaker area noise cancelling microphone pickup is now covered with thin scotch tape which mutes it and reduces the "wind noise" and "echo feedback" effects.

It did not totally fix the whole issue, but gets it down into the realm of being able to go ahead and use the totally free FreedomPOP service while still waiting for a better fix to be invented.

Part of the problem is me, my hearing is so shot that I run the volume way up and put the phone in speaker mode, then I use it like a normal phone just so I can hear clearly.   I was able to cut the volume down to 3/4 after opening up the mouth mic hole in both the case and the phone body, but I really still need to use the speakerphone to get enough sound for me to hear it clearly.



Do stuff like that on a modern noise cancelling phone and I guess you can expect some echo issues to come from it.

http://www.angrybureaucrat.com/2015/04/the-absolute-cheapest-even-free-cell.html

The Absolute Cheapest (Even Free!) Cell Phone Plans, 2015 Edition



This provides a back check on my opinions and situational analysis --- before you spend money and change systems getting a second opinion is a good thing.

I agree that FreedomPOP is the cheapest way currently out there -- if you are willing to fight them a bit over the bills they send you and spend the time to get your actual program set up the way you really want it.

I further agree that Republic Wireless is the VERY BEST QUALITY cheapest way to get trouble free no hassels known good service for the least amount of money.

He has some other low cost options that I have never used and he does provide some charts and other tools that are sorta interesting and useful.

He does identify the lowest cost options if you are not in a Sprint area -- Verizon and T-Mobile NVOs are identified as best choices if you are locked into those areas.

BE AWARE his entire article assumes you have high speed internet in your home already.

   
Republic Wireless gives you a gigabyte of cellular data for $20, then refunds what you don't use at the end of the month.   Not a roll over data amount that you would never get around to using, but a $$$ credit on your account.

There is no free cellular data with RW.  The 500 meg of free cell data was the big incentive to get me to try FreedomPOP.

       
Republic Wireless mostly uses voice over Wi-Fi technology (voice over internet). You will be using the Wi-Fi capabilities of the Moto G phone to make it all work at your home or around your work (if your work has wifi, and most places do).

However Republic wisely recognizes that people get away from Wi-Fi signals whenever they're in their cars rolling on down the road. To cover that they seamlessly hand off your current activity to Sprint 3G and 4G cellular tower service.

Republic Wireless can do your voice either way Wi-Fi and or Sprint cellular.   If you have a data plan they can handle your data either way.   If you go out of a Sprint area completely they can roam you over to Verizon because they know Sprint towers are spotty and Verizon is everywhere.

Yes, they charge a little more, but it is for a polished and refined and HONEST low end product that is still 2/3 cheaper than AT&T.

I paid $12.25 per line for Republic Wireless Basic and I was completely happy ..... until somebody waved 100% free AND 50 meg of free data in front of my nose ---- HOWEVER remember FreedomPOP is NOT polished and it is NOT refined and it is a constant BS snarky upsell if you ain't paying attention to your bill each month.    

And FreedomPOP doesn't work right, not 100% not right now.   My new Moto E phone on FP echos like a silly echo chamber  most times, partially because I use it on speaker all the time to get more volume for my bad hearing.

Serowbot wrote on 02/01/16 at 14:14:18:



Slow Answer

Your Moto G would be able to pick up a wifi signal and give you unlimited free wifi data as long as you have a good wifi signal.   Furthermore, a RW Moto G would be able to make free phone calls anywhere in the world for free, off of that wifi data.

As soon as you leave the wifi area and have no wifi signal, you have no wifi data or phone calling on wifi either.   To augment this both companies provide Sprint tower cellular data packages and cellular calling packages, at various costs.   This generally gets called "cell data" and "cell calling" and it is the most expensive part of owning a smart phone.  

UGLY FACT:  The Big 4 send you to tower based cell data first, to maximize their revenue stream off of you.

The current revolution in low cost is people like Republic Wireless and FreedomPOP setting their phones up to go to wifi first, then going over to cell data only as required.

Why does this all work out for me so well?

My family has good wifi at home, and when we are at work we are inside the wifi coverage of a university campus.   I find the latest phones have such good ears on them that I simply can't get outside of good wifi coverage any more anywhere in the dorms areas or in the teaching buildings areas.  

My previous phones did not have such good ears on them ..... on those phones I needed cell data a lot more than I do now.

========================================

Final Reason to go with Republic Wireless

Serowbot is finding out they have a forum, a community of users, who are very much like SuzukiSavage.com.    You can get your questions answered over there.

Example:   There is more good information about FreedomPOP on the RW forum than on FreedomPOP's own forum.

   ..... sheet fire, boys, there is more good information on SuzukiSavage.com than on FreedomPOP's own forum.

OK, I have found out that FreedomPOP's free service is not quite real, it is intentionally flawed in ways that can only be fixed by paying out extra dollars for several additional services.  The "massive echo issue" would require over $10 a month in extra services to try to fix it as an issue (supposedly).

This puts it on price parity with Republic Wireless, which is a GOOD service that works honestly and well.


As such, I have contacted my ebay seller to return the 2 phones under his 30 day money back guarantee (at least I will see what he has to say about the phones having massive echo issues).   Since I think he really is FP, I expect some line of BS from him instead of a return authorization (in which case Ebay will handle it).

This is sad, as if FP wasn't just a rip off gimmick this would have been a groundbreaking lowering of the cell phone cost barriers.  

By only supplying their free service (right along with a massive echo issue) FP claims to give you free ongoing use of the device as a backup emergency phone suitable for emergency calls, etc.   So you might as well keep the free service (but it ain't free, the little charges keep on coming).

Next, if you attempt to cancel, FP tells you you have no contract and nothing to cancel, once again trying to get you to hang in there as a free customer.

I have read on line accounts of people actually reporting their charge card as "lost" as the needed step to finally shut FP off from charging them ongoing little fees and charges.

We shall see ......

A mild echo issue also seems to be internal to the Moto E phone.    Discussion on RW says if you tape over the camera mic and DON'T talk in speaker mode and don't run the volume up all the way the phones are fine.  

I beg to differ, the phones are NOT FINE, the Moto E has an issue that needs a software upgrade to the phone software to fix it.    Lenovo/Motorola  has not provided this update required fix at this point in time.

However, the impromptu user fix as described does stop the problem.   For normal folks, this may be a good enough fix.

The fix is unusable for me as I have very poor hearing now, and I need the extra volume and sometimes even use speaker phone feature to get even more volume.  



Serobot, be aware that Moto G 2nd gen is reported to have a version of this problem as well.