Tired of your Samsung Note flaming out? Why not go mega-pedestrian and save money?
With the Samsung Note doing multiple human torch impressions and the new Google Pixel being a $700 android phone, I’d like to sing the praises of a rather unassuming phone that isn’t an Amazon phone but is an Amazon phone and is also a straight up — yep you get the Google play store — android phone.
The Lenovo MotoG 4 is available in an Amazon designed “Special offers” format. What that means is one ad notification everytime you swipe to use the phone. Big woof. It’s only available to Amazon Prime members but for that reason, $50 of the phone price is subsidized by Amazon. So $179.00 you can get a 32GB internal memory phone with 2GB of RAM. Also out of the box the phone is loaded with Amazon software of Amazon shopping, Alexa (yep two ways to talk to your phone), Audible (including the new Audible Channels — free podcast style content to listen to), my favorite Amazon Music and a few more.
Now to be very clear, this is NOT a Fire OS phone, this is an Android Marshmallow phone that has Google Play and the Ask Google on the home screen.
This is an unlocked phone that works with ALL carriers. I bought a Straight Talk AT&T sim card for $2 at Wal-Mart.com and for $55 a month I have 10GB of LTE data that downgrades to 2G and unlimited talk and text.
It’s not all incredible because the camera is good but not fabulous, and the video it makes are good but in some situations the focus shifts trying to follow the object in the focus lock area but with a little care and good light you can get what you want.
Sound quality is good but the ringtones are wonky. Small price to pay for downloading all your favorite albums to your MicroSD card from Amazon Music and playing them whenever without touching your bandwidth.
Let me say that again. Next time you are in a high speed WiFi situation, any and all Amazon Prime content — movies, tv, books, audiobooks, and music can be downloaded to your phone (including your MicroSD card) and played back later. So if you have a long commute with no wifi, just fill up at McDonald’s and you’re good for the ride.
The final nice feature, and what makes it really cool, is it comes with a “Power Charger” that literally charges it up very quickly. You can get it back up to speed in a half hour or so with this fast-fast charger.
I’ve had mine for 3 months now and besides saving my soul by reuniting me with my favorite music, it’s been a great phone that has a rich set of features mostly provided by the Amazon software that’s already set up and ready to go when you get the phone.
