Sim cards and carriers, discussion

[bcnaz]

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