Because I work at a place that is awesome, I sometimes get to go on fun trips. Most recently, I got to go to sunny Santa Barbara, California and then the not so sunny/surprisingly cold, San Francisco. I had my trusty Moto X (2nd Gen.) with me the whole way. WiFi was everywhere! From the rental house I stayed in, to the breakfast place I found, to the train I took up the Californian coast. On the flip side, the hotel in San Fran had terrible WiFi that cut in and out for the last 5 days of my trip. I thought for sure I’d use a ton of cell data, but by the time I landed back in Raleigh, I had only used 700(ish)MB for the month of August! Woo!
I never went out of my way to find WiFi. Coffee shops, restaurants, hotels, book stores, and even parks, realize that free WiFi is a big draw for getting patrons in the door (or err…park). It almost became more odd to find a place without free WiFi on my trip. And, I only did the most basic of phone optimizations before I left. Did you know lots of apps LOVE to use up your cell data in the background when you’re not even using your phone?! A couple quick flips of a switch in Facebook settings took care of that for me. I also made sure to set app updates to happen only over WiFi through Google Play settings. I also turned off push notifications for any app that I didn’t use regularly (sorry, Amazon, I don’t need to be reminded what I left in my shopping cart twice daily. You’ll get my money soon enough…). I was in control of what data my apps were using, not the other way around. It felt good to walk around the city knowing I wasn’t “leaking” cell data and my hard-earned cash everywhere I went.
I was sure to take plenty of pictures too, so you can see how the Moto X camera holds up. Follow along on my adventure in the photo journal below!
All photos taken on a Moto X (2nd Gen.)


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