Smartphone With Wi-Fi Smarts

What if you could get a top-tier, current-model smartphone with all the bells and whistles, and pay between $5 and $40 a month for unlimited voice, text and data? And there's no contract required. Well, you can if you sign up with an innovative carrier called Republic Wireless.

Republic's secret is it modifies brand-name phones so they place voice calls and send texts over Wi-Fi instead of more expensive cellular networks. That lets the company charge less per month and forgo contracts. And now it offers a top-tier phone, the Moto X from Motorola. When Wi-Fi is absent or too weak, Republic's phones switch to Sprint's cellular network for calling and texting. Cellular calls and texts don't cost extra. If you start a call via Wi-Fi and keep talking as you leave Wi-Fi range, the call switches over to cellular. Most other smartphones can make Wi-Fi calls, but these typically require an app. Republic modifies the phone's main dialer and texting functions to work over Wi-Fi whenever possible. You don't have to do anything special to initiate a Wi-Fi call or text.