Phone Variants

[Billie Jean]

I assume that many of us have been in a situation where a team that has accidentally bought an illegal variant of the allowed phones (for example, a Moto G_S instead of a Moto G_) and has asked for special permission to used this phone. I've been wondering, how big of a difference would these variants make? Naturally they're illegal and the team can't use them if they advance to their next competition and if they have any network problems they might not be able to get help.

However, would a team with a different variant phone have a strategical advantage? Do they have a high chance of having lots of connectivity issues? Would it be wrong to give them an exemption and let them for now use the phone?

What do you think?

Thank you for this question! The phones that are listed on the official "approved" list are models that FIRST has specifically tested with our Control System. If a team has a Moto G variant that is not on the approved list, the team should not have any technical advantage over other teams who use "approved" phones. Also, it is quite possible that their version of the Moto G phone, even though it's not on the approved list might work with the Control System and FTC Software.

However, since the this phone has not been tested by FIRST we cannot provide any assurance that it will work completely with our Control System. We have seen, for instance, a situation where the North American version of the Motorola Moto E4 Play phone worked well with the FTC Control System. However, the European version of this phone (which has the same model name, but a different SKU number) did not have support for the Logitech F310 gamepad controllers that are commonly used by our teams.

If a team brings an "unofficial" Moto G variant phone to an event, and if the phone has been working properly for them, then there might not be technical issues that would prevent them from reliably controlling their robot with that phone, even if its model number differs slightly from the officially approved phones. Also, these phones should not provide any advantage over other phones used during an FTC competition.