Mobile Carriers

[rocket2nfinity]

So I've had my pinephone for about a month now and for whatever reason, I can't get US Mobile to work, or Red Pocket to work.

I can't comment on anything but Verizon, because i live in the middle of nowhere and only get Verizon here.

I tried the us mobile sim with mobian phosh, arch phosh, and then ordered a gsma sim card from red pocket. I couldn't get any signal at all using the gsma so i ordered a gsmt card and after going through a bunch of nonsense with the support people, ended up finally getting my balance transferred from my gsma to my gsmt.

Now on mobian phosh, the exact same thing is happening with the red pocket gsmt (Verizon) as it was with the us mobile Verizon one.

Ill boot it up, and after a minute or so I'll have a few bars showing up in thev status bar, along with the 4G icon, but the data connection icon with the two horizontal arrows will have an X. If i go to modem details at that point it'll show i have about 60% signal strength, lte network and will say not registered for the status.

Then, if i go into the APN settings, and select the red pocket one, or any other one for that matter (a few from Verizon pop up with contract in the name) the 4G icon and the signal strength icons will flash on and off a few times then after maybe 4 or 5 complete flashes they'll just disappear all together and will say 0% signal with no status.

I have also tried selecting 2G only, 3G only, 4G only. But only with red pocket.

With 4G only it says denied for status, 3G says not registered, and 2G says not registered.

At this point I'm beyond frustrated to say the least. Does anyone know of any Verizon mvno provider, or even if Verizon works in general?

I'm thinking Verizon blocked unsupported devices or something. On that note, would there be anyway to spoof the pinephone as something else?

When i had the gsma card from red pocket in the only, while it never even obtained signal, in the line info page on the red pocket website, it registered as another device. I can't remember which but it did show up as an Android when i googled the model it showed.

Now with the gsmt it doesn't say anything.

On manjaro plasma beta 4 and dev, an error comes up and the modem says no carrier. I also can't edit the apn settings through the ui. 

Haven't tried setting manually yet. Figuring that out will be what i do tonight

This has been our experience exactly. I had to look at the name to make sure that I did not write this post!  So if you ever get anything working?

In the case of both of you, there could be another explanation for your difficulties - you actually aren't on your parent network but on a roaming partner (perhaps a roaming partner that is incompatible with the Pinephone). Especially true if it says "denied" but you are using an MVNO that does not care about your IMEI (US Mobile, Red Pocket). Would also explain your sms troubles.

The only way to be sure would be to use a network analysis tool such as cellmapper, or open signal,etc., on an android device and find out exactly who your carrier is and the particulars of your network.