There have been a lot of rumors around Google"s Project Fi service lately. Earlier this month, people started noticing that Google was beginning to drop its "Project" branding in favor of using the company name. And then yesterday, it leaked that the firm was planning to support more devices.
Today, that all becomes official. Project Fi is now officially Google Fi. Moreover, the service officially supports quite a bit more phones, including iPhones, along with devices from Samsung, Huawei, HTC, and more.
The good news is that these new devices are officially supported, meaning that you can sign up for Google Fi with one, and get support when you need it. There"s even a Google Fi app for iOS that"s available today. It"s also the first time that a U.S. carrier has stated official support for Huawei phones.
The bad news is that as far as service is concerned, nothing has changed at all. As we noted in our review of the service back in 2016, you"ve always been able to pop a Fi SIM into any GSM device, and it will work, although it just works as a T-Mobile SIM.
Google Fi works by combining the networks of T-Mobile, Sprint, and U.S. Cellular and choosing the best signal. Devices made for Fi will do this, but the newly added devices still will not.
| iPhone 5s or newer | Huawei Mate 20 Pro |
|---|---|
| | |
As you can see, these devices are supported for 4G LTE speeds, just as they were before, but they still don"t support switching between networks.
Some phones are listed as being unable to connect fo Fi though. For example, iPhones supported are only the 5s or later, although to be fair, those are all of the iPhones supported by Apple and the Fi app needs iOS 11 to work. Some Android phones, such as the HTC U12+, won"t work either.
You can find the full list of supported devices here. Companies like Essential, Nokia, OnePlus, and Xiaomi are in the Other section.
If you"ve got a smartphone from Apple, OnePlus, Samsung, Huawei, or one of the other supported OEMs, the good news is that it"s easier to activate your device now. Previously, you"d need to activate a device that was built for Fi just to sign up for the service, and then you could put the SIM card in any phone that you want.
To download the Google Fi app for iOS, you can find it here. For Android, you can find it on the Play Store here.