I bought a phone from Visible, and it arrived. I activated it and now have unlimited 4G LTE data. The model I chose was the Motorola Moto G7 Power because it has a 5,000mAh battery. I really wanted a Samsung, but Visible has a hard time keeping phones in stock. No throttling and no data caps for $25/month will lead to that. The Motorola was also cheaper at $179. They have cheaper phones but not ones good enough for what I'm trying to do: home internet.
I find some things about the Motorola very annoying, but my plan is to use it only for internet. I would not want this phone as my everyday phone. Visible advertises overnight shipping, but because of the holiday, I had to wait until Tuesday for it to arrive. Due to real life stuff, I didn't get to do much with it the first night. However, for the past two nights I've been using Visible for my internet connection. With Windstream I get 1.25Mbps up to 1.5Mbps, though I rarely see 1.5 any more, and I don't know why. With Visible, owned by Verizon, I get around 3Mbps to 11Mbps, usually somewhere in between. That's not the normal 4G LTE speed. I live in a rural area. In a city or near a tower, people get from around 38Mbps to 80Mbps. If I could afford a signal booster, I would be getting those speeds as well. Unfortunately, I'm at the edge of the local tower's range and get one or two bars tops indoors. That really degrades the speed. One bar away from the windows and maybe two bars standing in front of a window. I'm not rich, and signal boosters aren't cheap. That's something to think about later after more stimulus.
So far, 4G LTE speed is an improvement over Windstream. Pages don't take as long to load. I could stream HD video if I wanted to. I've been pondering getting MLB TV when baseball comes back. I've tried it with Windstream, but 1.5Mbps is too slow for that. Even with minimal picture quality, it just didn't work. Buffer and play. Buffer and play. With less than SD picture quality. With 4G LTE I could stream at at least 720p. The bad thing is that MLB is talking about using a DH in National League games. If they do that, I'll skip baseball this year altogether. I have my standards.
The battery life on the phone is good so far. Each night I've used about 20% charge. That's with average web surfing and listening to YouTube while I do other things. I'm hoping I'll only have to charge it about every three days. We'll see how the battery holds up over time. Yes, I could keep it plugged in, but the battery is not replaceable through ordinary means. I haven't had any major downloads like Windows update or a major software update. I had a minor 9MB update that was through before the download software could register the network speed. It was showing me numbers as it tried to calculate it, but they weren't right. I updated some Google Play stuff on the phone itself that was much faster than on Windstream. Sadly, it doesn't give download speeds for that.
According to Visible's web site, tethering is supposed to be capped at 5Mbps. I'm not seeing that, probably because of my rural location. As part of my research before trying Visible, I saw some people saying they're capped and others saying they're not. It might depend on location and how busy Verizon's network is there. With 5G coming the 5Mbps tether cap would likely go away, I would imagine. With 4G network congestion gone, why would they need it? Nevertheless, I'm not abusing my unthrottled data privilege. I'm not giving them any excuses to throttle me. The 1.4GB software update I'm expecting around June 1st will be a test of that and of whether they're even paying attention to my location. It'll also be a great test of network speed. An update like that takes hours on Windstream. I can't wait to see how it does.
Price. Visible is $40/month unless you do the Party Plan. The price lowers the more people join the party up to four people. With four people the price is $25/month. The people don't even have to know each other or where they live. Everyone pays his or her own bill seperately. The cell phone forum I'm on has a dedicated post just for people joining the Party Plan. Reddit has a place for it. Finding a party is easy. The first month of service is $25, so they give customers plenty of time to look for one. I'm using my first month to test this out to make sure it's going to be able to replace Windstream before I try to join a party.
Reliability. It's too early to tell. So far, I've only hit one patch where the connection stuttered, and it only lasted so many seconds. We'll see over time.
The one thing I still need to do is buy a router for my home network. I have my Google Home Minis that I use to control lights and ask for information. Visible doesn't allow tethering of more than one device. They do allow tethering of routers and don't care how many devices people hook up to them. That goes back to the 5Mbps cap on tethering they have in congested areas. It appears that my DSL modem will not act as a router for other than DSL. To get a plain router is $20ish(travel routers) to $50ish(real ones). I've been looking and researching those. I'll probably order one next week or over the weekend.
If you've ever wondered how the Nazis came to power, watch this video.
A Waking Nightmare is a video of Covid 19 patients talking about what it was like on the ventilator and afterward. It's grim stuff.
How SARS-CoV-2 spreads. The picture under #1 is funny and so California. The chart under #4 is the main reason I'm posting this. It shows how long the virus lasts on various surfaces. The authorities have been downplaying surface spread, but this chart shows the reality of it.
Have a great weekend.
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