06-10-2021, 09:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 06-10-2021, 09:56 PM by AwHereWeGoAgain.)
Just Got my Pinephone yesterday. Quite the adventure but I will leave that to a different post. I can say with pretty good confidence that Visible is not a viable carrier at this time. That could change in the future but for now its simply a no go. It can see towers but no calls texts or data. (Tested in Mobian/Manjaro Phosh) I made quite a few APN attemps for the unsuported phones (There are apperantly 4 apns total that need to be added) but I had about as much luck as everyone else who attempted it. If you guys know a way or have some ideas I would love to hear it.
Next, Straight Talk. (The Walmart burner sim) It worked.....for about 5 seconds before they shut me down. (I used the Verison sim.) I guess they are pissed I pulled the sim out of my flip phone and put it in the pinephone. After about 3 calls and a few texts I get an audio message instructing me to put the sim back in the original phone. (This amuses me. Why do they care what phone I put it in? Its my plan, my sim, and my money and I can simply choose to not pay since there is no contract.)
Now that I know that Straight talk....sort of works, im considering getting a sim specific for the pine phone and registering via phone call. Im still not sure if data works....didnt get that far before getting shut off. I do know that ST is offers Verizon, AT&T, Sprint sims so ideally, if they don't whitelist Pine Phone they have as good a chance as any. If they do whitelist......as mentioned, a spoof may be an order.
Next time im at Walmart I guess ill burn up another ST sim since I had progress with it.
For those trying verizon and it's MVNOs, the APN for data is vzwinternet
I have all working with Verizon sim via US Mobile using modem manager based OSes. Ofono ones work best with GSM sims
US Mobile works great. The Verizon sim needs to be activated in a separate phone though. The GSM sim would let me activate it with my pinephones IMEI however I dont have GSM service in my area so I couldn't test it. As others have mentioned, Call,Text, and data all work.
Just to let y'all know, Red Pocket has a sale on eBay, lower prices for buying a year worth of various monthly plans. There's a 30 dollar plan for a year of minimal service (200 minutes, 1000 texts and .2GB of data per month), 20GB/month and unlimited otherwise for 360, and some in between sizes. Not sure which carriers they all work with but I'm hoping to either lower the cost of service (as I have a dinky 1MB plan) or ramp up the amount of data for said service. Not sure about posting a links and I am unaffiliated but have been pretty happy with them overall. Seller name is redpocketstore - hope it helps some of you out who are on the fence about paying for service you may not use much of.
I think I'm going to get something cheap as well as an upgrade on my pinephone's plan. Will see how it goes.
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it doesn't get happy
it doesn't get sad
it just runs programs
(06-19-2021, 05:08 AM)AwHereWeGoAgain Wrote: US Mobile works great. The Verizon sim needs to be activated in a separate phone though. The GSM sim would let me activate it with my pinephones IMEI however I dont have GSM service in my area so I couldn't test it. As others have mentioned, Call,Text, and data all work.
We could not get US Mobile to work. Does it have to have SIM activated in another phone? We do not have another phone to use- had old now phased out flip phones. Would it work if I borrowed someone's old unlocked phone?
Im assuming that you are using the Verizon sim. (The black one) If that is the case, yes. You must activate it in a different phone as their website does not recognize pinephones IMEI as being compatible with Verizon LTE. (It is.....they just dont know that.) Once you get a compatible phone, you can activate the sim and swap it to your pinephone.
Hope this helps.
So far I been having pretty good luck with Walmart Family Mobile pre paid GSM sim on Mobian. Only been like a week though, I am off work this week but when I go back I do drive all over the U.S. and so looking forward to doing extended testing.
I was pleasantly surprised to be able to sign up without giving any real name, no onerous requirements for showing ID or anything of the sort. You will need an email address though.
07-06-2021, 04:25 PM
(This post was last modified: 07-06-2021, 04:26 PM by mouffa.)
you can change the IMEI to one from some phone that you don't use, if you configure the APN correctly then you will almost for sure have internet
(05-10-2021, 02:25 PM)mynameisearlb Wrote: 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?
(07-14-2021, 10:09 PM)Nutmeg Wrote: (05-10-2021, 02:25 PM)mynameisearlb Wrote: 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.
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