Sim cards and carriers, discussion

[calinb]

I was wondering if certain distros work better than others for call quality. I have been able to activate both AT&T and Verizon through MVNO's with great signal and 4G LTE all day.  <snip>

I'm using H20 prepaid wireless (an AT&T MVNO). The SIM card was previously installed in my Moto G4 and Moto E phones. H20 is functional for voice, SMS and data on my PinePhone. Sadly, it doesn't work at my home and I must wait for the Inland Cellular (a small CDMA provider) to support VoLTE before I'll be able to use my phone outside of the big cities here in rural Idaho. Even Verizon does not yet provide Gen4 and VoLTE to its rural Idaho customers.

I've found Mobian to offer the best stability and fewest mobile network connection problems as well as the most functional GUI interface, but I still find myself using the CLI quite often.

I've come to the conclusion that the PinePhone is really a "GSM phone", which for the most part supports VoLTE so it can be used to access CDMA carrier networks too (via VoLTE only, where it's available). Also, WCDMA (listed as supported in the PinePhone modem spec) is a GSM "thing." It first brought Gen4 performance to the "GSM carriers."

The problem with the rural USA is no providers supports VoLTE (or even Gen 4) throughout their service areas. In summary, the PinePhone is currently a poor choice for people who need coverage in many rural areas but it's a great choice to support community open source smartphone development!