PlumRAM Plus 4G Volte Rugged Flip Phone, IP68 Shock Proof T-Mobile – Black

This phone sells itself as everything I want in a phone:CompactWaterproofRuggedSimpleReliableHowever, I have been bitterly disappointed. The battery life is terrible for a flip phone. Instead of the three or four days you usually get, it needs to be charged every night to make it through the next day. The screen cracked already. So much for being rugged. I did get it wet with no problems so that is a plus. My cell service is through T-Mobile and has been terrible, not sure if that's T-Mobile or the phone. I had activation trouble. Plum claims you can just pop the SIM card in the phone and you are good to go but that was not the case. Three calls to customer service later I finally got it activated. Transferring contacts by bluetooth worked well. It is fairly simple to use but texting isn't great. The dedicated flashlight button is nice but the flashlight isn't strong enough to be useful. Might as well just flip it open and use the glow of the screen.

A bit of background....verbose but ultimately helpful:The discontinuation of 3G resulted in my parents' mobile provider (AT&T postpaid ) sending them "free" Alcatel 4G VoLTE capable phones. Easy directions to activate were included ....except the phones would not activate. My parents had a grandfathered plan that was $25 a month and their phones were so old that they had mini sim cards, instead of micro or Nano. After hours on the phone with AT&T customer service personnel I went to an AT&T store to see if I could get Nano Sim cards for the new phones because obviously the mini sim cards would not fit. They told me that they could not activate the phones and they could not honor their current plans. They wanted to put each of my parents on a $75 per month unlimited data plan and they would have to get new nano SD cards for the new flip phones. I told them my parents do not use data and that is why they use flip phones and not smartphones. Very long story short, even AT&T prepaid plans were more expensive because they needed a minimum of four lines to be affordable. There are two people involved, my mother and my father. I talked them into leaving AT&T and I returned the free flip phones obtained from AT&T and canceled their service.I have been on Mint mobile with a $15 per month plan for years and it's fine for me, I have a low-end smartphone and it does everything I need. I bought ultimately several different what type of non smart phones for my parents. A few were incredibly difficult to navigate, a few like this one just did not seem to work adequately on Mint mobile. I will know focus on the Plum Ram plus 4G LTE itself.For anyone wondering I can tell you from using many different flip type non-smartphones this truly is one of the most intuitive to use * and* offers a nice grip for anyone with large hands or with dexterity issues.A long press on the red telephone button turns it on and also turns it off. A quick press of the red button and ends a call. It was easy to enter contacts (I didn't bother trying to import from my Dad's prior phone).The keypad has large buttons and there's a center menu button and around the perimeter there are printed arrows. This was very important to my parents because phones with an unlabeled "ring" around the center button that essentially acts as a four-way arrow was very hard for my parents to operate. They have no trouble with this phone. It's very comfortable in one's hand and is light but feels substantial.When I first activated it on Mint mobile, I had significant problems with the phone not completing calls, not receiving calls and dropping them. I emailed customer service but received what looked like a cookie cutter response that did not really address my question. When I sent a follow-up message I got the identical response from them that I had the first time. I should note that their website has a phone number which I never tried. It's possible their customer service is better by phone.By this point in the very long story, my dad really liked this phone. No it didn't really work LOL but he liked how it operated and he liked the feel in his hand. I ended up going with a different phone for my mother, which I reviewed separately (Easyfone A1 Prime 4G Pro, too slippery for my father's large hands ). Neither phone was working well on Mint.I finally went to a nearby T-Mobile store, hoping they could help because mint works on T-Mobile towers. Long story short they let me put in a T-Mobile sim card and it worked fine. I canceled mint and I signed my parents up each with T-Mobile prepaid $15 a month. Their phones work fine. When on Mint mobile my father's Plum phone never displayed 4G VoLTE but it did on T-Mobile. I won't say a call never drops but it's very rare and usually happens in a crowded Big Box Store where the signal fluctuates.I bought a second oem battery here on Amazon , as I liked my parents to carry a charged spare battery with them.Lastly the Cradle charger would be nice for someone with dexterity problems. I personally have not used it because I usually charge the phone for him and use the micro USB charger on the side of the phone. It is nice that there are both options however.I hope this review helps some of you I feel like I'm forgetting to mention some things but I'll edit if anyone has questions.

Nice, rugged flip phone from the outside. Advertised as being unlocked and compatible with all GSM carriers. Not the case. On some adds, even listed the cell phone carrier that we utilize. No way to get this phone to work as it is non-compatible (after hours on the phone with customer service and tech support personnel trying to make it work). Save the hassle and time and invest your money into a phone that will actually work with your carrier.

The Plum Ram is new, so there are glitches to be worked out, but this phone seems golden--filling a much-needed hole for a decent flip-phone--and the company employees definitely do their job and do it well. Persistence and patience are required because this phone is fresh off the factory line, especially with regard to using an unlocked phone with various companies. (I see a review from someone who couldn't get their phone to work and returned it. I have no doubt it would have worked if they had persisted!) My only complaint is that the SIM insert seems delicate and unnecessarily complicated compared with other flip phones where you just slide the SIM in.Company employees are friendly and dependable--send an email and they will get back to you, and if you send your number, they will call if that is what is needed.

There is much to dislike about this phone. the user interface is primitive and awkward ( I don't mean compared to smart phones, I mean it's primitive and awkward compared to other feature phones) Texting is particularly difficult (again, compared to other flip phones I have owned) But probably the most serous defect is that the phone would chronically drop service when you move from one cellular "cell" to another. This is in an area with good cellular coverage. I would frequently find that after having driven to a different part of town, the phone was no longer usable. It would not receive phone calls, you could not make phone calls. Curiously, it would receive voice mail notifications. This was usually how I discovered that I had missed calls, as I would get a voice mail notification. Despite the notification, I would be unable to retrieve that voice mail, not make any outgoing calls. Nor would I ever get a "missed call notification" Looking at the display, there was no indication that the phone had failed, the icons indicated that it was in contact with the network and receiving 4G service .. but you were not. You would have to turn the phone off, then turn it back on again, and it would establish contact with the network, and would work normally ... until you moved into the area of a different cell antenna, then it was lather, rinse, repeat. After numerous missed calls, I got a different phone.