[Q] Flash Verizon Moto G to Republic Wireless?

illuminerdi · Jun 4, 2014

Ok so the Moto G is rooted and bootloader unlock capable, there's ROM dumps of the VZW and RW roms, and both Republic Wireless and Verizon are CDMA, but I can't seem to find any hard data on whether or not it's possible to flash a Verizon Moto G to Republic?

There's certainly no guides for how to do it, the only guide on this forum is flashing a Boost Moto G to Pageplus...

The reason I ask is because there are a ton of Verizon prepaid Moto G's on Ebay for $75 apiece, which is literally half off the price of ordering from RW.

Has anyone done this? Is it possible? Is it just a matter of unlocking the phone, flashing the RW rom and modem, and activating the phone on RW?

I've done a ton of roots and flashes of various devices before, but I've never flashed a carrier-locked device to another carrier - I'm not scared to do it, I just want to know if it's possible at present. I know it's theoretically possible, but without someone confirming they've done it I'm leery of dropping $70 on this phone, though I'd really love to save $70 on it since I'm scrambling to replace my wife's phone after she managed to waterlog another phone less than 3 months after the previous one...

(And yes, I've searched this and other xda forums for the answer to this and turned up nothing concrete...)

charesa39 · Jun 4, 2014

illuminerdi said:
Ok so the Moto G is rooted and bootloader unlock capable, there's ROM dumps of the VZW and RW roms, and both Republic Wireless and Verizon are CDMA, but I can't seem to find any hard data on whether or not it's possible to flash a Verizon Moto G to Republic?

There's certainly no guides for how to do it, the only guide on this forum is flashing a Boost Moto G to Pageplus...

The reason I ask is because there are a ton of Verizon prepaid Moto G's on Ebay for $75 apiece, which is literally half off the price of ordering from RW.

Has anyone done this? Is it possible? Is it just a matter of unlocking the phone, flashing the RW rom and modem, and activating the phone on RW?

I've done a ton of roots and flashes of various devices before, but I've never flashed a carrier-locked device to another carrier - I'm not scared to do it, I just want to know if it's possible at present. I know it's theoretically possible, but without someone confirming they've done it I'm leery of dropping $70 on this phone, though I'd really love to save $70 on it since I'm scrambling to replace my wife's phone after she managed to waterlog another phone less than 3 months after the previous one...

(And yes, I've searched this and other xda forums for the answer to this and turned up nothing concrete...)

There are probably no guides because the bootloader on the Verizon model is currently the only one that cannot be officially unlocked. I say "officially" because, apparently, there's a "Chinese guy" on these forums that you can pay to get you a code to unlock it. I bought one from Amazon (when it was $70) to use as a WiFi only device (aka media player), but I found out that same night that the VZW model is the only one with the locked down bootloader. Needless to say, I refused the package, and it went right back to where it came from. I knew that price was too good to be true. It's cheaper because the VZW model is junk (at least in my opinion).

illuminerdi · Jun 4, 2014

charesa39 said:
There are probably no guides because the bootloader on the Verizon model is currently the only one that cannot be officially unlocked. I say "officially" because, apparently, there's a "Chinese guy" on these forums that you can pay to get you a code to unlock it. I bought one from Amazon (when it was $70) to use as a WiFi only device (aka media player), but I found out that same night that the VZW model is the only one with the locked down bootloader. Needless to say, I refused the package, and it went right back to where it came from. I knew that price was too good to be true. It's cheaper because the VZW model is junk (at least in my opinion).

Oh I thought the unlock posted here was not an "official" unlock and therefore would work on any Moto G because it was more or less a "hack", was I mistaken about that?

What about flashing a Boost over to RW or some other variant? I can get a Boost Moto G on ebay for about $100, so that's still $50 cheaper than ordering from RW.

charesa39 · Jun 4, 2014

illuminerdi said:
Oh I thought the unlock posted here was not an "official" unlock and therefore would work on any Moto G because it was more or less a "hack", was I mistaken about that?

What about flashing a Boost over to RW or some other variant? I can get a Boost Moto G on ebay for about $100, so that's still $50 cheaper than ordering from RW.

Well, before you are able to flash anything onto your phone, you need to have an unlocked bootloader. In order to do that, you have to register with Motorola, and then go through a couple steps to get the unlock code for your device. This is so they can keep track of you unlocking your bootloader because it voids your warranty (in the US at least). This is the first step in all the guides I've seen for rooting this device. Then after that, you can flash a custom recovery, root, etc. If you Google "motorola unlockable bootloader", you can click on the link that takes you to the official Motorola page that shows which of their devices can have their bootloader unlocked.

As far flashing Boost to RW, I couldn't tell ya. I'm not familiar with either one of those. If it were possible, I would imagine it wouldn't be the easiest thing to do.

jcmarv · Jun 5, 2014

Since Boost and RW are both Sprint-MVNO's, I would think it would be a pretty easy straight forward flash. But I haven't heard of anyone doing it. Does RW offer "bring your own device" ?

Sent from my XT1028 using Tapatalk

illuminerdi · Jun 5, 2014

jcmarv said:
Since Boost and RW are both Sprint-MVNO's, I would think it would be a pretty easy straight forward flash. But I haven't heard of anyone doing it. Does RW offer "bring your own device" ?

Sent from my XT1028 using Tapatalk

Sort of...they only have 2 phones that you can use, and you MUST use their ROM on the phones since it includes special controls for making calls over wifi when the signal is available. One of the 2 phones you can buy from them is the Moto G, and their ROM has been dumped by another forum member here. You can activate service directly from the phone itself, and they do allow reselling phones and activating used phones, so in theory you could buy a cheap Moto G somewhere, unlock the bootloader, flash the RW firmware onto it, and then activate.

But nobody has actually confirmed whether or not this works, and I'm not really in a position financially at the moment to plunk down the money to experiment like this.

To add another layer of complexity on top of everything, the Verizon Moto G's are the only ones that you can't unlock the bootloader on (yet), but I'm going to ignore that hurdle for now - I'll get a Boost phone or something instead if that ends up being the only block.

Does anyone have a spare Moto G that they want to test this on (or could send me...?) I think RW has a 30 day guarantee, so even if you signed up for service with them to test cellula+3G data you could cancel without paying any money.

Though I suspect I may have to be the guinea pig on this, but again, I'm not really in a position to pay for this right now. I wouldn't mind waiting but my wife needs a phone soon.

eg0097 · Jun 22, 2014

illuminerdi said:
Sort of...they only have 2 phones that you can use, and you MUST use their ROM on the phones since it includes special controls for making calls over wifi when the signal is available. One of the 2 phones you can buy from them is the Moto G, and their ROM has been dumped by another forum member here. You can activate service directly from the phone itself, and they do allow reselling phones and activating used phones, so in theory you could buy a cheap Moto G somewhere, unlock the bootloader, flash the RW firmware onto it, and then activate.

But nobody has actually confirmed whether or not this works, and I'm not really in a position financially at the moment to plunk down the money to experiment like this.

To add another layer of complexity on top of everything, the Verizon Moto G's are the only ones that you can't unlock the bootloader on (yet), but I'm going to ignore that hurdle for now - I'll get a Boost phone or something instead if that ends up being the only block.

Does anyone have a spare Moto G that they want to test this on (or could send me...?) I think RW has a 30 day guarantee, so even if you signed up for service with them to test cellula+3G data you could cancel without paying any money.

Though I suspect I may have to be the guinea pig on this, but again, I'm not really in a position to pay for this right now. I wouldn't mind waiting but my wife needs a phone soon.

I have an unlocked verizon moto g and i flashed the republic software on my phone but sadly the activation can never complete.

kevindiehl · Apr 23, 2015

eg0097 said:
I have an unlocked verizon moto g and i flashed the republic software on my phone but sadly the activation can never complete.

Did anyone figure this out?
I would like to use a Verizon Moto G on Republic Wireless.

smihaila · Feb 24, 2016

I'm also interested in this, but doing it the other way around: flashing a non-Republic Wireless firmware onto a Moto G XT1031 which came from Republic Wiress / with RepublicWireless Lollipop 5.1 firmware and locked Motorola bootloader. So that I can use my phone with other CDMA-based, Sprint MVNOs (i.e. RingPlus, Ting, Tello etc).

I am actually switched over to RingPlus (cancelled the RW service). With the stock RW XT1031_falcon_cdma 5.1 firmware, the phone handles inbound voice calls well. The only issue is obviously the dial out voice calls - RW's own freaking software app intercepts my dial out call and will reject it, arguing that I have no active RW service...

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[Q] Flash Verizon Moto G to Republic Wireless?

illuminerdi

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charesa39

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illuminerdi

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charesa39

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jcmarv

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illuminerdi

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eg0097

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kevindiehl

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smihaila

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