Smartphones are becoming more expensive every single year and it's not a surprise they're becoming increasingly capable and we're spending more time on them consuming data at a higher rate than ever before but there's a company called Volk Fi Wireless who are building a smartphone that can call people and access the Internet unlimited from anywhere and for free forever that's a concept that I can get on board with but let's see how it works when you buy the Volk one smartphone it comes bundled with one of the companies Volk five wireless hubs kind of like a standard Wi-Fi hub but instead of just being able to provide internet within a home this hub can use radio frequencies to fire that signal up to a couple of miles away and the signal can only be picked up by Volk phones as they have a receiver built in and so as long as you're in this range of a couple of miles you can browse the internet and call people all without needing a SIM card so that's pretty cool right you've got unlimited data even miles from home things actually get a lot more interesting when you step outside that each one of these Volk smartphones has not just a receiver but also a transmitter so at the same time as being able to consume the internet your phone is able to send that signal to other nearby Volk phones.
So all of a sudden that Volk fi signal is able to reach much further than just a couple of miles it forms a network of devices that are all helping each other to stay connected they've even developed rules just so that nobody abuses the system essentially you're allowed to use as much data as you provide with an extra five gigs on top of that per month as a buffer you still have a phone number so you can call landlines your signal could reach the most remote locations and the most interesting and the most exciting thing about it is that it will get faster the more people use it as opposed to just more congested like the current solution the concept is new and it's different and people are skeptical I'm skeptical but there is some reassurance in the fact that even if all else fails this is a solid all-round smartphone.
We need an invite to reserve one but considering it's priced at $394 you're getting a fair bit of phone here it's got a snapdragon 845 four gigs of ram and in dual 16 mega pick camera plus a 6.2 inch AMOLED display and it runs the latest Android 9 but and you knew this was coming I've got a few reservations the whole concept of the phone relies heavily on having this network of users the more people use volk phones the further that signal can travel from the Volk hubs and basically this means two things number one is that if it gains some initial momentum the potential is massive and the whole system could even threaten carriers that have been going for decades they've been running a trial in Hawaii and the results so far look promising but then number two is that if it doesn't gain that traction then the entire Volk aspect of the smartphone is useless and you're just getting an all round average $400 small firm it will still have a sim card slot so you can use it like a normal phone but then for that price you can do better just from past experience the latter seems more likely I would love to see this take off but it is gonna be very hard to convince those initial buyers to take a gamble on a company nobody has heard of also because this company has next to no past reputation and considering that all we're seeing are renders on the website it's likely that the phone is barely finished and that the company are using this whole reservation system to try and gauge the amount of demand there is before deciding whether to mass-produce or not. From a technical standpoint there is zero mention of the kinds of speeds you can expect not usually a good sign and I would be a bit worried about battery life it's got a solid three thousand seven hundred mAh cell but if you factor in having to effectively have a continuous data hotspot on that will definitely be somewhat hindered. Stay tuned to CERadar for more interesting updates.
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