I’ve heard enough stories from iPhone users with GoogleFi, to feel like the entire experince is just half-backed and very subpar to a budget and low phone carrier that you’d probably have with cheap pre-paid plans.
I’d love to hear from iPhone users your experinces, Pros, Cons, problems, and will you continue sticking with GoogleFi?
Thanks in advance for your input - as I decide if GoogleFi may be worth the $$ savings for my family plan.
My mom and MIL both have iPhones on Fi. They’re probably the least tech savvy people ever, but would notice the second something would happen with the service.
I’ve heard nothing. Not a peep. Service and performance isn’t noticably different from when we had T Mobile.
Porting in numbers was smooth. The lack of 5G isn’t an issue in my area. The biggest “issue” was showing them to get voicemails in the Fi app instead of what they were used to.
We have a family plan. 5 of us. 4 iPhones. $119 per month. We have been with FI for nearly 4 years and it’s been flawless. We go to Europe every so often and we flip the plan for international. Also flawless.
Highly recommend
Only issue was sending photos using SMS to android users. Despite support trying very hard they couldn’t get it to work. The solution: deselect MMS messaging in settings//messaging.
it’s ok. I stick with it because of the international roaming.
It just feels like they deliberately keep iPhone support sub par even though the technologies are in place to fully support it. It’s not like it doesn’t work, it’s just borderline annoying sometimes. I can only assume this is to help promote their android phones .
Definitely needs some improvement. My wife’s iPhone 13 has the mms issue from time to time and we have to mess with the settings to get it working again. On a recent trip to baja, she had zero service and I had no problems with my pixel 5a. It’s weird because on another trip to Mexico earlier in the year, her service was fine. I still don’t know why her phone didn’t work, but we were on vacation so it was ok, but annoying if we needed to communicate when I cruised to the store for supplies.
Was on pixels for years, been on iPhone for a little over a year and totally content with it. iMessages actually fixed some of the frustrations with google messaging services. Only thing missing for me is ability to have apple watches work with Fi.
5G is an issue? Other than bragging rights and those addicted to speed tests, 99.99% of all apps most users don’t need that extra speed have on their phones operate at 100% efficiency on 4G speeds. 4G is also far more stable and reliable at the present time while 5G is still trouble-prone in many areas. Aside from thenMMs quirk that occurs whenever there is an update, it works fine and you also enjoy the benefits of international benefits that other providers don’t have.
I’ve had them since June and finally ported my line over about a week and a half ago. Only problem I had was in Netherlands my phone would not connect to network. After a short chat with support, they fixed it. Just had to manually select a network. Service and signal home and overseas has been great. I am in South Africa now and going through the provided vpn I am getting 50mb speeds and I was getting the same in Dubai at airport. Hotspot works here as well in Cape Town. So far I have used it in Netherlands, UK, Dubai and South Africa and with the no data connection once, it has been perfect. At home in the US (middle TN), I have traveled to Dollywood, Tybee island and PCB and always had service. I have been very satisfied with fi on iPhone. I never had to re-enter APN settings since I joined either.
I’ve had nothing but positive experience, compared to major carriers. I love the light touch, self serve interface, and especially fast OS updates on my Pixel phone. Highly recommended.
I don’t even think about it. I was on Pixel phones for a long time so I was on Fi because it was cheap for a single user. Bought an iphone last year, concerned that the experience was going to be irritating, wasn’t.
There are only two things that are mildly annoying. First is sometimes my phone doesn’t ring and it goes to VM. No idea why it does this, don’t really care because I usually don’t answer my phone anyway. Second is when I get a VM two apps are bothering me that I have a VM and it won’t clear until I go into the Fi app to deal with it. Whatever.
I guess the APN nuking on software updates is kind of annoying but that happened on my Pixels occasionally too, so, whatever.
IMO there’s no real reason to get on Fi with an iphone if you didn’t already have service but it’s also just fine service.
I switched from Android to iPhone about a year ago and was already on Google Fi. Here’s what I found: 5G (doesn’t work, iOS needs to fix), WiFi Calling (it works now!), fix texts to Android users (you have to update your Cellular Settings), Network Switching (doesn’t work, we only get T-Mobile). Here’s the video link in case you’re interested. 
LinkTw.in - Open All Links Directly in Mobile Apps w/ Deep Links (opens YouTube).
Here’s A $20 Google fi credit if y’all need a promo code 4JE32X
Haven’t had an issue.
I’ll say this with a caution that I’ve only used Fi for 2 weeks for my husband and I on a family plan when we traveled internationally recently.
It worked great on our iPhones. There weren’t any issues at all. SIM instructions were clear, the Fi app was really easy to use. I don’t recall how the speeds were in the US, but they were slow overseas. I still think it’s a great value for US prices.
It is indeed half-baked and subpar.
Finally got wifi calling a some weeks ago, but (as far as I can tell) still no HD Voice or VoLTE.
Voicemail is annoying, since you’ll get a notification and a badge from the iOS Phone app, but you have to go into the Google Fi app (which you’ll also get a notification and badge from) to address it.
Sometimes recently the Google Fi app has just refused to delete voicemail. Sometimes nothing happens, or sometimes it crashes. The latter has been more common, for me. Whichever it is, the same thing will happen to the same voicemail message for a some period of time (a few days, it seems). I’m sure this is a temporary thing as the app and backend are worked on, but it’s something I’ve seen recently.
Once in a while the APN will just get nuked, so MMS will stop working. It’s been a while for me, but more recent for my mom. But it’s definitely happened more than once.
Good price and decent service, but the bullshit about no 5G until iPhone 13 is really obnoxious. Especially since Fi support blames TMo and TMo blames Fi.
3 of us use iPhone for the Fi service. Two of them don’t have any issue (especially for the Internet and call service). I really love FI with my iPhone. *** however , don’t use the Fi’s VPN** on iPhone. I can’t use internet when I installed the VPN on my iPhone.
I really want to thank everyone for giving your thoughts, opinions, and experiences as it has helped me decide to go with GoogleFi or not and at their low price for a 4 phone plan, it’s hard not to go with them even with all of their “F U” subpar half baked BS they give to iPhone users.
Well, I switched from T-Mobile to GoogleFi as an iPhone user, and here are my thoughts…
I have 4 phones I on my plan.
T-Mobile:
I have 4 phones on my plan. My last bill was in the neighborhood of $240 to $260 a month.
I’ve had T-Mobile for 7+ years. Overall their service was great, and their customer service when I needed them was also great, T-mobile offered nice and “fun” add-ons to their users with free gifts on Tuesdays and the sorts. But the pricing just got out of hand over the years and IMO everything that made T-Mobile great was outweighed by the monthly bill.
GoogleFi - with an iPhone
I have 4 phones on the plan - 2 of them iPhones.
Transferring my services was fairly easy with the online instructions I found from GoogleFi. Setting up the iPhones also was slightly less than “ok”. Setting up the SMS, FaceTime, Data, and whatever else was clunky. Not what I would expect from such a large brand name from Google. It worked because I am technically inclined, but if it were my teenage and adult kids, I don’t think they would have figured it out so well.
Phone calls with an iPhone…
Connecting only with 4G. Where we live that is fine. Can’t really tell the difference when we had 5G with T-Mobile since 5G connectivity was also hit or miss where we live too. Voice calls seem as good as it was with T-mobile. Data connections seem more or less as well as it was with T-mobile.
Voice mail with iPhones on GoogleFi.
I am going to just say it, plain stupid as hell. I will explain. The voice mail works well, if just slightly less than T-mobile, but still acceptable. The added function of needing to use the GoogFi app to go to voicemail is dumb and clunky.
Over-all
GoogFi, does offer free VPN services which is nice. For the most part, I trust Google and its services, just a bit less when it comes to privacy and feeding me ads. I don’t travel outside the country so my services are here in the US. My overall monthly bill is under $90 and for that price, I can’t do better for 4 Phones with unlimited data, and for that price, I will tolerate Google’s 2nd rate nuances with their services. I haven’t had to contact customer services, but with Google’s history from their other services of trying to resolve customers’ concerns with only their web pages, I expect it to be as horrible as I could imagine it to be. - Oh well - still worth the monthly savings for me.
Look at mint mobile if you’re on an iPhone. I don’t see any google fi benefits for iPhone users.
Fi service works but when you pick up a call you’re waiting 3-5 seconds before anyone can hear you.