Sim cards and carriers, discussion
(03-03-2022, 05:18 PM)parry Wrote:
(02-23-2022, 07:11 PM)bcnaz Wrote: Wednesday - - Feb. 23, 2022    RE:  Kroger Wireless

I was just at the Kroger website,  they have  unlimited talk/text + 3gb data for $15 per month when purchased in 3 month packs ($45)

I put my Pine phone (rev:1.2a )  'imei' number into their verification checker and I was approved.

( though I could not find any mention about hot spot availability )

I stopped just short of a purchase this time, but at that price I may give it a whirl soon.

It was interesting to see your posts "bcnaz"  about puretalk.  I had 3 different blackberries (but see the 2 Ronnies here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIaXSBSQ0W0 ) 1 Z10 and 2 Z30's. The Z10 was showing LTE (It was an STL100-3) on the ATT network and the Z30' s  one an STA100-5 and an STA100-2 showed 4G (which ATT really misled people about).  Based on the data https://www.phonearena.com/news/Cheat-sh...SA_id77933  it would have seemed that the Z10 and STA100-5 could have accessed the ATT network.  Of course there is the Voice over LTE codec that is needed and afaik the phone company has a lot of input into it and may even supply it -  I am dead unsure about the latter.

We were warned by ATT in early Feb(even before) that they would shut down the "3G" network on Feb 22 but I thought I would hold out until the bitter end. But I bought a purephone plan for our family and reduced out bill by about 50-60 dollars following your recommendations in anticipation that ATT's, unnecessarily stringent requirements (to make money no doubt) would not fall over Purephone.  Thanks
Yesterday (March 2) the 4G logo (it was really 3G ) that showed on my Z30's disappeared and it was clear that ATT has turned off the signal in my area.   I turned to an older iphone 6 which I had wiped, but despite the fact that it should have connected to the LTE bands, it did not get access.    Despite the fact that I asked Purephone directly whether it was supported (they said it did), and after migrating from ATT to Puretalk, the only phone showing up on my account (3 phones) that was supposedly NOT supporting LTE was my blackberr,y but the iphone 6 and iphone 6s did not initially.  It turned out that I could not update the SW because there was no room.  

My iphone 6 did not work on Puretalk despite the fact that it should have done but one of the other iphones, an iPhone 6s did work after upgrading the OS from 12 to 15.  So that was a rather interesting issue -  how was Apple determining the phone's function ?  It would be greate to know.

When all else failed I turned to my Pinephone.  It sort of works on Puretalk (I will post some details) but at least Puretalk does not ban it,  Frankly it is becoming eminently clear to me that this 3G migration is heavily coupled to sales plans by phone manufacturers. The challenges that Blackberry but most importantly Apple throw in making it  easy (they make it v hard) to move contacts are clearly very well thought out and intended to make it very difficult. It is a royal pain to move contacts from an iPhone to any other phone, but it is dead easy to move them in, say by a SIM card. It is not easy to move contacts from a Z10 or z30 blackberry as vcf files either as the files are not complete.  

I cannot rely on my Pinephone for anything right now. Yes it sort of makes calls, the audio quality is variable and poor on the latest majaro phosh and the simplest things like adding a pause to a phone call is impossible(like you would if you wanted to use a phonecard).   The battery life is lousy and the strange names given to the various  applications are far from intuitive.   So Im going to have to buy a used something or other while I try to make this pinephone useful.  I am still amazed at the business model of (a) buying a phone that does not work that well and (b) hoping that the community will make it better.  But one lives and learns I suppose..  If anyone has some suggestions about an OS that works well on the pinephone that
(a) Provides good voice quality
(b) Allows facile import and export of contacts and even just allows contacts to be edited!
© Integrates a good mail program
(d)Makes chat easy
(e)Improves the UI
(f)Allows pause characters to be added to a number

That would be great.  

In any case, thanks again for the pointer to Puretalk.  I will post some of the trials and tribulations of the 3G shutoff and the use of the Pinephone elsewhere in this forum.

parry

So far Mobian has been pretty dependable, almost 2 years,  for working talk/sms-text/data,  though they seem to have a problem with updating the last two months.
This is on my original Pine phones,  --  

  >  On my Pro phone -- Mobian runs good while it runs, but it has had a bad problem with freezing in suspend...
  ------   It has had this problem for about two months...!

Maybe they are saving the good stuff for Mobians birthday coming up in a month or two...?

On my original Pine phone(s) Mobian speaker phone is working pretty good now, ---  I did have to turn down the microphone input volume a lot
to reduce the feed-back noise.   --- but an easy Fix  !

Mobian's Geary email works great after set-up,  just open the app and you are inside your email inbox.  ( you must have data or wifi connection )

They do still need to improve the power usage over-all, --- but the suspend feature does save a lot of battery life now on the original Pine phones.

Give Mobian a test drive on an sd card, ---- see if it is closer to a daily driver for you ?

Good Luck
      LINUX = CHOICES
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Thanks again @bcnaz !
Do you know how I can add the phone numbers of people who call me to my contacts ?  I can't find a way
I have seen comments that people are using evolution, but it would be so much better to use the simple contacts app. How is it that when you receive a call you can't create a contact out of it. I know that you can copy the number, but despite doing so, I can't find a way to paste it because when you go to create a user simply tapping on the empty number does nothing.   What is particularly galling is the fact that under the recent calls there is a box marked contacts, but that screen does not allow the creation of a contact, it just allows the search of a contact.

Mobian is definitely more stable for me. Manjaro phosh (I think it was) was unreadable -  the light grey on white being a problem for me and even worse when I tried pairing the phone with my car using BT, although the device connected, I could not manage to use it

Im having problems with ssh on mobian -  I keep getting "no hostkey alg" which I think is due to the lack of keys- which i created according to https://askubuntu.com/questions/268272/s...ostkey-alg with no luck.

I could not set up my email on Geary as there is no option to use SSL/TLS afai can tell

Finally,  because puretalk requires the correct apn settings -  which are not consistent for example
https://www.mxwiki.com/us/pure-talk-apn says that the APN name is att.mvno  but puretalk says
https://www.puretalkusa.com/phone_programming  the name is RESELLER
In addition both links show different mmsc servers.

I tried RESELLER orignally, but could not connect to the internet. When I tried att.mvno, I could connect.

In addition, on the pinephone mobian OS, there is no way to add an mmsc server.

As always any suggestions welcome - and thank you for bothering ...


Your suggestions welcome
  Reply
(03-04-2022, 07:45 PM)parry Wrote: Thanks again "bcnaz" !
Do you know how I can add the phone numbers of people who call me to my contacts ?  I can't find a way
I have seen comments that people are using evolution, but it would be so much better to use the simple contacts app. How is it that when you receive a call you can't create a contact out of it. I know that you can copy the number, but despite doing so, I can't find a way to paste it because when you go to create a user simply tapping on the empty number does nothing.   What is particularly galling is the fact that under the recent calls there is a box marked contacts, but that screen does not allow the creation of a contact, it just allows the search of a contact.

Mobian is definitely more stable for me. Manjaro phosh (I think it was) was unreadable -  the light grey on white being a problem for me and even worse when I tried pairing the phone with my car using BT, although the device connected, I could not manage to use it

Im having problems with ssh on mobian -  I keep getting "no hostkey alg" which I think is due to the lack of keys- which i created according to https://askubuntu.com/questions/268272/s...ostkey-alg with no luck.

I could not set up my email on Geary as there is no option to use SSL/TLS afai can tell

Finally,  because puretalk requires the correct apn settings -  which are not consistent for example
https://www.mxwiki.com/us/pure-talk-apn

Your suggestions welcome
*********

I think they have changed the base in the chat and contacts app's,  it seems like "you could" add the new contacts at some
point in the past.
But for now I just delete the new call or message then manually enter it into my contacts.
  For the time being, it does work that way.
I do keep a paper copy of all my contacts,   -- as we are sort of in "Un-charted waters"  at the moment.
and Geary works pretty well for me using the manual entry method.

*****
The APN at Pure Talk appears to have changed from your above link,
at the Pure Talk website it says :
Name : Pure Talk internet
APN : att.mvno
      LINUX = CHOICES
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(03-04-2022, 08:00 PM)bcnaz Wrote:
(03-04-2022, 07:45 PM)parry Wrote: I can't find a way to paste it because when you go to create a user simply tapping on the empty number does nothing.  

I do have a cell question for the group, but 1st:

Does copy-paste work for folks?!

I can only copy-paste when in convergence (so external mouse right-click, or external keyboard CTRL-V)

Or when in phone mode, only the Terminal app can copy-paste (b/c the keyboard input expands to allow CTRL-V)

Try any app: even simplistic gedit.  Sure, copy any txt but there's NO pop-ups or long pressing that actually paste unless I'm a) in the Terminal app or b) in convergence.

---
Back to cell:

Which MVNO's are _actually_ on AT&T towers? 

Yes I've seen the lists but wanted to hear folks' confirmation.

I requested a SIM from StraightTalk but when their website asked for my zipcode, the only SIM available was "Verizon compatible devices".  <-- I assume that means Verizon's frequencies.  Well, I've already tried 2 MVNO's on Verizon tower's and don't need a 3rd; the signal is too poor. 

I need an true AT&T MVNO.
PPv1.2a running PMOS ... almost a daily driver!
  Reply
(03-08-2022, 07:10 AM)vap0rtranz Wrote:
(03-04-2022, 08:00 PM)bcnaz Wrote:
(03-04-2022, 07:45 PM)parry Wrote: I can't find a way to paste it because when you go to create a user simply tapping on the empty number does nothing.  

I do have a cell question for the group, but 1st:

Does copy-paste work for folks?!

I can only copy-paste when in convergence (so external mouse right-click, or external keyboard CTRL-V)

Or when in phone mode, only the Terminal app can copy-paste (b/c the keyboard input expands to allow CTRL-V)

Try any app: even simplistic gedit.  Sure, copy any txt but there's NO pop-ups or long pressing that actually paste unless I'm a) in the Terminal app or b) in convergence.

---
Back to cell:

Which MVNO's are _actually_ on AT&T towers? 

Yes I've seen the lists but wanted to hear folks' confirmation.

I requested a SIM from StraightTalk but when their website asked for my zipcode, the only SIM available was "Verizon compatible devices".  <-- I assume that means Verizon's frequencies.  Well, I've already tried 2 MVNO's on Verizon tower's and don't need a 3rd; the signal is too poor. 

I need an true AT&T MVNO.

Red Pocket - select the GSMA sim
  Reply
H2o and Pure Talk are both at&t MVNO's
      LINUX = CHOICES
         **BCnAZ**
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OK I'll try PureTalk or Red Pocket.

BTW: Walmart sells the StraighTalk SIM Kit that had _3_ SIMs in it! T-Mobile's, AT&T's, and Verizon's. I was hopeful and think it is a nice Wack-A-Mole approach. But, I tried all 3. StraightTalk's Activation for AT&T gave an error on the IMEI and I don't have an AT&T authorized burner phone Sad, T-Mobile had 0 bars signal when I inserted the SIM @ home so I skipped it, and now Activation for Verizon has been stuck in "Line Inactive". StraightTalk doesn't have support via Chat, so I've been on hold for awhile awaiting support.

Ting & USMobile activation were both effortless or had quick response via online Chat support! I wish I had better signal with them at home.
PPv1.2a running PMOS ... almost a daily driver!
  Reply
Not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but I will contribute some info on my carrier (Verizon).

I have calls, data, SMS/MMS fully functional on Mobian on my Pinephone Pro. I had my activated sim from my iPhone and everything except MMS worked right out of the box. Got MMS working last night, and I can send/receive pictures. Haven't tested sending to a group, but I do receive group messages.

I did get a bit of an issue on my second SIM insert, where I could send texts but not receive them. This was fixed somehow (not sure what fixed it) and I have my PPP as my daily driver now!

Biggest thing for Verizon is make sure you activate the SIM into a "supported" device first, and by supported I mean Android or iPhone and it should work fine!
  Reply
Hi all, Just wanted to share another Canadian carrier that works with the PinePhone (on Telus network) called Public Mobile.
I ordered a sim card from Amazon and activated online for the 25.00 a month plan and so far it's worked flawlessly. Calls and SMS work fine and the contract renews monthly - great if I need to cancel service for any reason. Also the sim has the 3 size punch-out style card and it felt solid inserting into the phone after cutting it down.

I managed to ride a flip phone all the way to a PinPhone - feels good! Take care all, I'm so greatful that this product and community exist!
  Reply


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