T-Mobile has sold a line of budget phones under the brand ‘REVVL’ for a few years now. Last year’s entries were the REVVLRY and REVVLRY+, and going into 2020, they’re a good case study for why you should never buy carrier-made phones.
Support pages for both the REVVLRY and REVVLRY+ point out that the phones haven’t received a single update since their launch in April 2019. No OS updates, no security patches, nothing.
The REVVL’s update log only has one update.
You might be thinking, “they’re budget phones, they usually don’t get frequent updates anyway.” While that is true, the REVVLRY and REVVLRY+ are both slightly-modified Motorola phones—the former a Moto G7 Play, and the latter a G7 Plus. While Motorola is usually slow to release major OS updates, the company still releases security patches for its unlocked budget phones on a semi-regular basis.
T-Mobile even had a better track record with its previous phones: the REVVL 2 received four security patches in seven months, and the older REVVL Plus was updated three times.
In summary, you probably shouldn’t buy any carrier-branded phones, and you definitely shouldn’t buy T-Mobile’s.
