More than a decade after launching in Europe, the Netherlands company is now selling its repairable phones in the US, starting with the Fairphone (Gen 6+).
  • SalmonTractor@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
    1·
    1 day ago

    That phone claiming US/western hemisphere support is laughable.

    It supports T-Mobile native bands, but without more extensive band support, domestic roaming will not be the best. (Some LTEiRA markets T-Mobile can currently roam on Verizon thanks to the USCC acquisition, for example. No band 13, no go.)

    I’d not really claim it supports AT&T either. It’s missing band 14, 29, 30, 46, 48, n260, n261. It’s also not on AT&T’s list of supported phones: https://www.att.com/scmsassets/images/support/pdf/Devices-Working-on-ATT-Network.pdf

    14 is basically the only way to get signal in markets where AT&T doesn’t have 5 or 12 licenses, like 2/3 of Nebraska.

    n260/n261 are big at venues, airports, etc. The lack of those mmWave bands will affect coverage in high-density locations on all three carriers.

    Even if it did support Verizon, without band 13 in the modem, Verizon’s low-band nationwide band, it’d be a mostly-brick.

    All three carriers require some kind of certification to be allowed on carrier networks (which alone should be illegal as they do it as a tactic to control the phone market.) Not just Verizon. (Verizon, at least, has a web site of certified devices: https://opendevelopment.verizonwireless.com/device-showcase and it’s quite broad.)

    Ironically, it will probably work with Verizon, even the BlackBerry Key2 does without certification. It just falls back to a very basic profile for flip phones. They don’t tend to actively block phones like AT&T does.

    Basically, it’s a T-Mobile-on-network-only phone. Things are going greeeeeat over at that carrier right now with the tens of thousands of layoffs and forcing customer plan changes even on grandfathered plans.

    • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      I’ma be a while, damn it. I just got a red magic 11 pro about 9 months ago and I usually go like 5 years on a phone.

      • luipaard0011@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        I have truly wanted that phone for movies (one of the few models with hidden front camera under display). Enjoy it! Hopefully it will the standard for phones/tables/monitors soon…

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          2·
          1 day ago

          It is absolutely great for that. I watch movies, videos, and tv shows way more than I take selfies or video chat. I don’t mind one bit that the camera quality suffers a bit from it. I also love that the back of the phone is completely smooth. I bought two glass screen protectors and put one on each side of the phone.

      • Ilandar@lemmy.todayEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        That’s a better phone in most aspects, there is no reason to regret purchasing it. Enjoy it now that you own it. Fairphone always say that the fairest phone you have is the your current one.

        • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.deEnglish
          1·
          2 days ago

          It’s an awesome phone, but the offshoot is a locked bootloader and not many years of software support.

          I’ll be firmly stuck on android with this phone.

  • stewie410@programming.devEnglish
    5·
    2 days ago

    AT&T/T-Mobile only is tough, but they have to start somewhere I’m sure. I’ve wanted a FairPhone for a number of years; maybe I’ll accept shittier service (for my area) when my contract ends.

      • stewie410@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        1 day ago

        The first phone/carrier I got as an adult was an iPhone 4s from Sprint, and I basically didn’t have service for 98% of the phone’s life. Then again, the merger probably means a larger network overall.

        They should also have a service agreement with Verizon, giving them at least some additional coverage; though I’m unsure how much 3P are discriminated at the tower.

  • Turret3857@infosec.pubEnglish
    48·
    2 days ago

    So they designed a phone for the US audience only to leave out 33% of the US audience by not supporting Verizon towers… do they want to fucking fail here??

    • Horsey@lemmy.worldEnglish
      20·
      2 days ago

      Verizon is very protective over their network and always has been. They used CDMA for years just to lock out outside competition amongst other walled garden bullshit. When they moved to GSM they still tried to lock their network to a whitelist of phone IMEIs they control. They do not want you to buy an unlocked phone from a brand they do not get paid by to be put on the whitelist support.

    • keyez@lemmy.worldEnglish
      1·
      1 day ago

      Verizon doesn’t support a lot of unlocked devices even sold from major manufacturers

    • sanitation@lemmy.todayOPEnglish
      3·
      2 days ago

      Concur. But gotta look at the frequencies, there is a chance most Verizon /visible freqs are supported