OTR: Mobile Phone Mobility

I got my first cellular phone in the early 90's. My Dad had a "car phone" pretty much when they came out in the mid-80's, but the price points weren't good for me until 1994 or so. Even then, you didn't use the phone for continual talking and you were mighty careful about "roaming charges" when you were outside of your home coverage area. And those phones were heavy -- and battery life sucked.

I'm not sure that I could name all of the phones I've had since then, but I'm pretty much managed to keep the same phone numbers and service provider (Cellular One turned into AT&T) for almost 25 years. Along the way, I've also had employer-provided devices at different times, but always maintained a personal mobile phone account. At different times, I carried two phones until "BYOD" became more popular and I decided that I could use my personal phone for limited business purposes.

One of the keys along the way was that getting the cell phone from the carrier was rarely a heart-stopping financial proposition. The phones were "subsidized" and could generally be purchased (with a two-year contract) for $100 to $200 or so. That has stopped and top of the line smartphones are now a $600 to $1000 expense. Phones that are a generation removed from what's current are cheaper and there are dozens of phones out there from various manufacturers at many price points. But if you want the new iPhone or the latest Galaxy, be prepared to pay up -- or pay the phone company on an installment plan.

About a year ago, as my iPhone 5 aged and I found out that Apple had set an end of life date (no more updates), I started to think about a replacement. But the thought of dropping $600+ on a cell phone wasn't where I wanted to be. I can get a decent laptop at that price point and while my phone is always with me, I'm just not prepared for that kind of expense on something that I'll likely be looking to replace in 24 to 36 months.

At the same time, one of my daughters was going to be spending the summer abroad and needed a phone that worked locally for emergency purposes. I had decided by then that I probably needed to move away from Apple and look for an unlocked phone that had global capabilities. If I could find the right phone at the right price point, my daughter would have a phone to use for the summer abroad. When she got home, she could go back to her iPhone and I'd use the phone she had taken on her trip. It was time to shop.

Once you leave the Apple ecosystem, your only real choice is something Android. With Android, you're wedded to Google, which isn't horrible. It's just a different ecosystem. The problem, however, is that with lots of different phone manufacturers, you can't be sure what flavor of Android you're going to get and how long it will be updated and supported. But poking around Amazon, I found more palatable price points. These days, your market-leading Android phones tend to be from Samsung. The challenge of Samsung is the price points are similar to Apple. Once you get past Samsung, you see a lot of names you might not be familiar with. I knew of some of these companies from my past employer and had varying degrees of distrust of some of them. I ended up going back to look at Motorola. Even though Motorola is owned by Lenovo now (just the mobile phone company), I still know a few people there and I know the phones are still mostly designed and engineered in the US.

I turned to features. I wanted a removable memory card so I could add the amount of storage I needed for photos and apps. I always seem to be out of space on iPhones. One feature I was keen to try out was dual SIM capability. The mobile phone can hold two SIM cards and thus operate on your "home" carrier as well as another carrier. This is useful when traveling abroad because you can purchase a local SIM card and use that for calls where you are, while retaining access to your "home" number and text messages. This reduces the roaming costs abroad. However, no US-based carrier sells dual SIM phones. So I was off to Amazon. After some searching, I found a Motorola G4 with dual SIM capability (model XT1621). The phone had a nice look and after reviewing Frequency Check (https://www.frequencycheck.com/), I found that it had very good support for most carriers globally -- and particularly for the country where my daughter was going. The price point was under $200. I picked up a protective case and a 128GB MicroSD card (the nice thing about Android phones is that they have expandable and removable memory capacity) for another $50 or so.

The phone arrived in a couple days. First thing I noticed when setting it up was that it was a phone designed for Mexico and Latin America, so I had to change the language setting to English. After that, it was fine, but when device updates show up, you see the update description in Spanish. A minor issue, to be sure. Android devices are easy to set up, assuming you have a Google account. What was interesting is that Google remembered my prior Motorola Android phones, even though I hadn't used Android in a number of years. So I was reunited with a few apps. Setup was quite smooth and easy. I stopped by a Target store to pick up a TracFone SIM card so I could try out the phone before committing to it. That process wasn't as smooth as I would have liked, but I was able to get the phone functioning and making calls.

I played with the phone for a week or so, getting used to the interface again and then decided to move my primary SIM card over from my iPhone. Ooops. The SIM card was the wrong size. A trip to the AT&T store solved that issue. So now I had two SIM cards functioning in the phone. What's interesting with this setup is that you can select which SIM card does what. In theory, you could have a SIM card that is used primarily for data, and one that is used for voice calls. Or you can make one used for most things, with the second just listening for calls. When you make a call or send a text, you can also select which SIM is used. I did notice, however, that you needed to put the SIM for data use in Slot 1 to benefit from high speed data connectivity. The radios associated with Slot 2 were slightly degraded, so Slot 2 is best used for voice and text only.

My daughter came home from school and I proudly showed her the phone. She poked at it for a bit and declared that she didn't like the interface. She ended up taking her iPhone with her, but only using it for wi-fi, which actually worked well. She ended up getting a local phone from her host family because she could never find a SIM card that worked right.

Since I had the phone set up, I continued to use it, ultimately upgrading to the Motorola G5 Plus (XT1681), which is also a dual SIM phone. Frequency Check confirmed that it was compatible around the globe. I've hung on to the TracFone SIM because it is a nice back up and super cheap -- although I sometimes wonder about who had the number previously because I've gotten a few odd phone calls. That phone was a little more expensive, but still below $300. That's been my everyday phone for six months. It works well, has a nice screen size, and I have few complaints. The biggest complaint is that they apparently had to remove one feature to accommodate the second SIM slot -- the magnetometer that is used as a compass. Not a huge deal, but sometimes the GPS gets confused. You also can't use one of my favorite apps, Sky Map, because the app can't track the orientation of the phone against the sky. But I live outside Chicago and you usually can't see a whole lot of stars in the night sky anyway.

The nice thing is that I've purchased two phones in one year for less than an iPhone. They work well and have greater flexibility. Both will work well in most countries around the globe, and if I want to get a local SIM card, I won't be fussing with AT&T to unlock my phone. If I get bored with the phone or see a new one, I'm not wrestling with justifying a huge price tag. If  I lose or break the phone, I'm not going to be crying over the cost to replace. I've found mobile phone mobility.