I had stumbled across Republic Wireless a couple years ago. I have to admit that their service was tempting. I mean, how can anyone resist $19/month for unlimited cell phone service with a smartphone. However, at the time, I just couldn’t make the jump to something that was still “beta”. Besides, things that I had grown used to weren’t yet available, like picture messaging.

Their original smartphone was not great. In fact it was almost the same as what I had and I was ready to ditch it (the LG Optimus). They later upgraded to another smartphone, the Motorola Defy XT. It was kind of cool with it’s water, dust, and scratch proof nature, but it still ran an old version of Android, the screen size was small, and it had been surpassed long ago by other smartphones when they announced it.

You might be wondering why a cellular company would only offer one phone. Well, Republic Wireless’s service is unique. In order to offer you such a low price, they offload many of the functions of a cell phone to available wireless networks around them when it’s available. They only rely on cell networks when they can’t connect to wireless. When you think about it, you’re likely surrounded by wireless at home and at work. In fact, I would venture to say that most of the time that you are stationary, there is a wireless access point that you could connect to. In order to offer this unique setup, Republic has to run custom software on the phone and get it approved by the cell phone manufacturer. In other words, it’s not a quick and easy process.

So, why even present you with a cell phone company that only offers one phone and seems to be so limited? Because this week, they finally opened up their service to make it worth another look again. A good long look. A look where you might be busting out the calculator to determine how much money you could save over time. Then you’ll start dreaming about how you could take that savings and take that trip through Europe you’ve always been dreaming of. Okay, maybe I’m getting ahead of myself.

On Wednesday of this last week, Republic Wireless made their new phone available to buy, the Moto X. I guess the best way to put it is that they jumped from a Dodge Neon to a Lexus (any Lexus, you decide). This phone is a flagship phone, a phone that any smartphone user would be happy to have (unless you’re addicted to your iPhone). The best part, it’s only $299. That may sound like a lot of money, but consider the fact that a new unlocked one on Amazon is currently $529.99.

In addition to a new fancy phone, they’ve also released brand new plans. You can now pick between 4 different plans and are no longer locked into one unlimited plan.

• $5/month – Unlimited everything over wireless only. This is for those who want to do some extreme savings or maybe want to replace their home phone and plan on keeping it at home all the time.
• $10/month – Unlimited calls and texts over cellular and wireless, but data is over wireless only.
• $25/month – Unlimited calls, texts, and 3G data over cellular.
• $40/month – Unlimited calls, texts, and 4G data over cellular.

You can also change your plan up to twice a month. So if you don’t need the data, but plan on going on a trip somewhere for the weekend, you can change your plan to one that includes data for a couple days and change back when you get home. It’s also important to note that if you use a lot of data over cellular, they will throttle it. It appears that the throttle limit is currently 5GB, which is a TON of data if you don’t stream videos and music all the time. My wife and I together use less than 500MB every month.

They’ve also made some additional improvements to the service. Supposedly, calls can now be handed off from wireless to cellular. That means when you’re at home and you make a call over wireless, and then hop in the car and drive away, it should continue to work even though you are no longer connected to wireless. I’m not sure how they did this, but one review I read said they couldn’t get it to work, while another one said they did. The other improvement is MMS (picture/video message) support.

I have not yet used their service, but with the new plans, it is definitely tempting. I do want to warn everyone that choosing Republic Wireless is not for the faint of heart. They don’t have a number you can call if you run into issues. You’ll have to resort to emailing them or searching through the forums for other people who have had the same issue. Also, if you don’t like the service, you can’t use the phone with Sprint, Verizon or any other carriers. It’s locked into Republic Wireless. Finally, the cell network they fall back to is the Sprint network, which doesn’t have great coverage for everyone. From what I had read though, the phone should be able to roam onto other networks and it even looks like they include 100MB of roaming data.

Should you switch? I guess that depends on how extreme you want to get with your mobile phone savings. We’re planning on trying it when we replace one of our phones. If you’re not ready to go to such extremes. You may want to check out Ting. (You can read my post about them here.)

Potential Savings: If you’ve got one line on Verizon, it looks like you would be paying $80/month for the lowest amount of data possible (500MB). You could get 3G unlimited data through Republic for $25/month or $40/month for 4G data. That’s a potential savings of $55 or $40/month respectively. That comes to a total yearly savings of $660 for 3G or $480 for 4G. Even with the cost of a new phone, you would still be saving quite a bit.