
My Time with Google's Cellular Service Was Mostly a Disaster - tim_sw
http://gizmodo.com/my-weeks-with-googles-cellular-service-were-mostly-a-di-1724915476
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tehlike
I use it, and for me it was kind of magical: i traveled to singapore and then
turkey in about two months, and didnt have to think about anything. It just
worked. Sometimes the network was slow, but i think it was because of local
network.

Then the reality sipped in. I had to switch to a local network. I was doing
work on laptop, and had to hotspot to laptop. It is impressive to see how much
data day to day work consumed. 10$ per gb was too high. I could get local data
plan for 1.5$/gb. I think i consumed about 20gb over the course of the trip.

I guess for what it is, google fi is pretty impressive. Except that 10$ could
be a bit prohibitive for certain use cases.

Disclaimer: im a google employee.

Edit: changed the data plan cost (to 1.5$ from 2.5)

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DiabloD3
Can we add (2015) to the end of this? This review is massively out of date,
biased, and most of his problems seem to stem his phone had issues, not his
service.

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mgberlin
As a counterpoint to the article, I used Fi for two years and never had a
single technical problem. The service was flawless and affordable. Then I
realized Google now had real time location tracking and the ability to turn on
my mic whenever they want, along with my email and search data, and that just
felt like too much data for a single company to have.

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rll
I absolutely love it. I only use it for data and I travel a ton. Never having
to hunt down SIM cards every 3 days when I hit a new country with a flat
global rate is great. And you get 10 free data sims, so everything that can
possibly get a sim jammed into it has one and works in every country.

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dano
I've had excellent results with Google fi across the US and Europe. Getting
off the plane in Milan and having service immediately was a terrific benefit.

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fallinghawks
I'm currently on Project Fi and I like it quite a lot. Travelling through
Europe was seamless (these were countries that Fi has an agreement with; I
assume otherwise I would have to purchase a local SIM, as I had had to do
before Fi.) My biggest complaint is a 5-to-25 second delay between pressing
the "call this" button and the line being picked up and actually dialed. Very
occasionally I'll have a call that doesn't ring, but I had had this with
previous providers and with greater frequency. Costs less than Straight Talk
and you pay only for what data you use. I'm on WiFi most of the time so my
data costs are pretty minimal.

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stevecalifornia
I have Google's phone service and it's horrible. In Europe I would lose all
service for days at a time. In the US it just randomly loses all service every
few hours for a few minutes. People will call me...and I'll stare at the phone
and it won't ring. Then I'll get a missed call notification. I have told my
friends that I am sure I will someday die while trying to call 911 over and
over and over again.

Google should be ashamed of how horrible it's phone service is.

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synicalx
I can understand this if you're traveling all the time and you have to pay for
your own phone bill, but beyond that the pricing seems a little steep
especially considering Google can probably use this to wring even more
marketing data out of you. Most sim only plans in Australia are about $20-30
cheaper per month than this.

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krosaen
From 2015...

As it happens this caught my attention on hn because my Fi service has sucked
for the past 2 weeks after working like a champ for almost 2 years. I think
it's my phone though, my wife (same nexus 5x phone, plan) hasn't had any
issues.

