(Unspecified) Mid-price smartphone coming to Project FI

So far, Project FI has been featuring only Nexus and Pixel phones. Of the new condition phones, prices are on the high side with the Pixels and Nexus 6P. For those willing to dig into the used market, more options open up with the Nexus 5X and 6. However, given the uniqueness of the Nexus phones, their price bottom is harder than the typical phone. So a need for something more affordable is mordant 😉

Good news is that responding to a customer’s question on Twitter, Project FI revealed that a new “mid-tier price” smartphone from a “partner” will be coming to Project FI later this year. No further details were given in the tweet, which you can see below…

WE TRY TO GUESS WHICH MID-PRICE PHONE IS COMING TO PROJECT FI
However, we can have some good educated guesses! Because Project FI is a mix of GSM and CDMA (Sprint), this compatible phone will need to be able to support both out of the box. There is only a small number of such phones that can do this at the moment. Since they are mentioned as “mid tier”, my first thought goes to the Motorola Moto G 4th and 5th generation phones. They are readily available and work with all. And there’s a pre-existing “relationship” between Google and Motorola 🙂

But they are not the only option. A number of other phones are using some of Qualcomm’s all-carrier processors, such as the Snapdragon 625. One such phone is the brand new Alcatel Idol 5S which just launched on Amazon. The product description says that CDMA support (Verizon, Sprint) is coming later this year. Which is when this new “mid-tier” phone is coming.

Considering the level of phones Google has made so far, a Moto G4/G5 or Idol 5S is probably as low as Google would go in terms of performance to showcase Android at its best. If they go lower, not as show-case-y.

I am currently doing the Project FI experiment with a Nexus 6. I switched from T-Mobile to P-FI last month with the good old Nexus 6. A review and more on Project FI is coming up. Spoiler alert: not perfect, but so far so good 🙂

June 30, 2017 Filed Under: smartphones Tagged With: