As part of its new “Bring Your Own Phone” program, Republic Wireless has now announced that it will support same day activations for Google’s Pixel smartphones as soon as they will be released. Although the smartphones are available for pre-order in the U.S. via the Google Play Store and exclusively through Verizon, Republic Wireless customers will be able to pop their SIM cards into the new Google flagship phones and take advantage of the network’s Wi-Fi calling technologies by the end of October.
Republic Wireless is a U.S.-based virtual mobile network operator that relies primarily on Wi-Fi calling and falls back to Sprint and T-Mobile’s cellular networks; a technology called hybrid Wi-Fi/cellular calling. Now the company has announced that Google Pixel and Pixel XL owners will have the opportunity to activate their smartphones on the first day of availability. According to Republic Wireless CEO, Chris Chuang, this is an exciting development as the company “worked hard to move our hybrid Wi-Fi/cellular calling and Adaptive Coverage technology out of the phone’s ROM and into the cloud”, and this has allowed Republic Wireless’ networks to open up to a wider selection of Android handsets. “Where it used to take months to certify new phones for our network […] we can now support the latest Android devices from all manufacturers on the same day as the Big 4 carriers.” Thus, Android smartphone customers who have pre-ordered the Google Pixel and Pixel XL can now acquire a Republic Wireless SIM card ahead of time for the price of $5, and recognize “immediate savings with plans that start as low as $15 a month.”
In the U.S. the Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones are available for pre-order in two storage configurations, namely 32 GB and 128 GB, and in one of three colors: “Quite Silver”, “Very Black” and “Really Blue”. Prices start at $649 and $769 for the unlocked Google Pixel and Pixel XL with 32 GB of on-board storage, while the 128 GB variants cost $749 and $869 respectively. The entry price guarantees a 5-inch AMOLED display with a resolution of 1920 x 1080, a Qualcomm Snapdragon 821 System-on-Chip, 4 GB of RAM, and access to a number of exclusive Android 7.1 Nougat features.