Back to Google Fi (Premium)

After two years with Mint Mobile, I’ve moved my phone number back to Google Fi. I’ll miss hearing from Mint owner Ryan Reynolds, and the lower overall cost. But there’s no doubt that Fi is the better overall service, at least for my needs.

To understand why, let’s start at the beginning: in 2007, I switched from Verizon and my then long-running 781 area code phone number to AT&T, when I received the 617 area code number that I’m still using. At that time, Verizon had a vastly superior network, which was why I was using it, but Apple released the iPhone as an AT&T exclusive and that was that. My phone was futuristic, but my wireless network was, for a time, from the past.

There was a nice side-benefit to using AT&T, too. AT&T was based on GSM wireless technology, unlike Verizon, which was CDMA-based, and that meant I could---or, had to---use a removable SIM card (like most of the rest of the planet). And that meant that I could, theoretically at first and literally later on, use my phones internationally using local SIM cards. We had just started our European-based home swaps, so this was an interesting coincidence. (Verizon eventually added support for SIM cards, of course.)

I was on AT&T for the entire duration of the Windows Phone era---roughly 2010 to 2015---and those handsets were mostly GSM-based, which made testing them easier as you could move SIMs around effortlessly. And concurrently to this, Android happened. I owned several Android handsets in the early years and later would switch between late-model Windows phones, iPhones, and Android phones. And that’s where I was at when we started this website in 2015.

Then Google launched what was then called Project Fi in April 2015. It was originally invite-only and was designed to work only with the terrible (Motorola-based) Nexus 6. But I was immediately interested, regardless, since the promise was so compelling: Fi would always try to use the best available network at any given time, whether it was CDMA-, GSM-, or Wi-Fi-based. When you were connected via Wi-Fi, calls and text messages would use that more reliable network instead, and when you were out in the world, the phone would seamlessly switch between the Sprint (CDMA) and T-Mobile (GSM) cellular networks. As innovatively, Fi offered transparent, pay-as-you-go pricing with no contracts: $20 per month got you unlimited talk, text, Wi-Fi tethering, and international coverage in 120+ countries, and each GB of data used was another $10; you also got credit for unused data up to the next GB.

When Google launched the much improved and Fi-compatible Nexus 6P and 5X in late 2015, I was ready to roll, and I tested the Nexus 6P with Project Fi as a secondary carrier. I fell in love with both: the Nexus 6P was the best handset of that time and Project Fi transformed cellular wireless, especially internationally after an important upgrade to the service. By mid-2016, I was sold on using Fi ...