Does anyone use an iPhone 5 on Freedompop and their free talk, text, and data plan?

[N3wbi3]

Freedompop has a basic plan of 200 minutes, 500 texts, and 500mb for $0 per month.

I was thinking of purchasing a refurbished Phone 5 from them to use with this plan since I don't use many minutes and I'm around WiFi a lot for data.

Does anyone already use Freedompops free plan with an iPhone 5?

In case anyone asks Freedompop is a Sprint MVNO that works much like Dropbox does: They give you a free service (like how Dropbox gives you 2gb online storage for free) with the hope that you eventually want more and upgrade to a paid plan with more minutes, data, etc.

 

[869639]

Freedompop has a basic plan of 200 minutes, 500 texts, and 500mb for $0 per month.

I was thinking of purchasing a refurbished Phone 5 from them to use with this plan since I don't use many minutes and I'm around WiFi a lot for data.

Does anyone already use Freedompops free plan with an iPhone 5?

In case anyone asks Freedompop is a Sprint MVNO that works much like Dropbox does: They give you a free service (like how Dropbox gives you 2gb online storage for free) with the hope that you eventually want more and upgrade to a paid plan with more minutes, data, etc.

I don't have a iPhone with them but I do have their App and I use it as a Second Line so I have multiple numbers available for me while only having one phone.

Their call quality is excellent but do note that they currently do not allow you to port in your number....so the only way you can go about is porting in your number to google voice and then forwarding the calls/texts from google voice to your freedom pop number.

I rarely make calls and for work related purposes 500 text messages are more than enough.

I would recommend it for anyone that doesn't use much minutes. I'm waiting for their promotion for the hotspot and planning to install that in my car as a permanent internet 500MB/month will be more than enough. They were giving away the hotspot for $16 few months back but I missed it.

 

[xgo324]

Freedom does come with some tradeoffs....

I got the iPhone 5 with Freedom Pop's free plan. Here's my small review after using it for a week...

Even though the iPhone on FreedomPop might be in beta, it does not feel like a typical beta program.

When service is below three bars of 3G or on 1x (2G), calling becomes unusable. I hear pops and cuts in and out and eventually I have to call them back. When I am able to call, it is pretty great. In a call, both people hear each other well. It is pretty clear and my friends from the receiving end seem claim that I'm using a landline rather than cell phone.

Now luckily, in most areas Sprint provides me three bars or higher and in (surprisingly) a lot of areas, I get LTE.

Three Bars of 3G:

Download - 0.52 Mbps (65.4 KB/s)
Upload - 0.81 Mbps (101 KB/s)

Five Bars of 3G:

Download - 1.5 Mbps (185 KB/s)
Upload - 0.9 Mbps (109 KB/s)

Four bars of LTE:

Download - 8.8 Mbps (1100 KB/s)
Upload - 3.95 Mbps (493 KB/s)

The FreedomPop app is designed well, however, it drains battery life when paired with background refresh. I compared one day with and one day without the app running in the background and the results show that backgrounding does drain the battery. Closing down the app gives me an extra day of battery life. When I left the app in the background with constant usage (browsing the week via Opera Mini and simple reminders and photo editing) I saw a 15% drop per half hour. After closing the app, I use 7% per hour of with cellular left on but without the app.

When you sign up for this service be wery of these things:

1) Turn off Automatic Top-Off
2) Disable some apps that may use Cell Data
3) I Recommend Opera Mini for Browsing the Web because of its data compression (Data Savings: Received 1 MB of 24MB)

My iPhone from FreedomPop had a broken mute switch and I had a tough time contacting customer support. I had to wait over 30 minutes to talk to a representative and they told me it might take weeks before I could exchange my device. My representative really didn't know the difference between the mute switch and the volume buttons...

Overall, it's a great service and I'm happy to use FreedomPop.

Hopefully FreedomPop could make a custom carrier bundle that allows calls over the cell network or Wifi just like T-Mobile iPhones on iOS 8. This would grant more battery life while giving us a more native experience.

If I were to rate my experience with Freedom Pop, here is how i would break it down:

1) Cost - 10/10
2) Calling (3G) - 2/5
3) Calling (LTE) - 5/5
4) Data / Coverage - 10/10
5) Customer Service - 2/10
6) Order / Shipping - 3/10

Score: 32/50......... Service and cost is great, but don't expect good customer service.