Hi, I’m in Canada and hoping to move away entirely from US goods/services, but I am not very knowledgeable (generally speaking) when it comes to tech.
Would this phone function in Canada?
Thank you!
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According to this list you are out of luck: VoLTE provider support
| Country | Provider | Device model | Date tested | Registered | Voice in | Voice out | SMS in | SMS out |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CA | Videotron | 10 II | 2022-07-14 | X |
But @makrolon had something good to say in November 2024.
If you tell us your provider and the phone you are thinking about using, we can help you more.
(I recommend Xperia 10 III or the 10 V or the C2 (if you are not very knowledgeable as you say), but this can vary based on the frequency of your provider / country)
And throwing in a “sad but true” Sailfish is not a: “i am expecting things to go as smooth as, and be a drop in replacement for Android or IOS” it takes a bit of reading (not toooo much), and the willingness to learn new things. You do no have to be a nerd / geek, but it helps 
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Someone asked recently about C2 LTE bands and there is supposedly 0 overlap with US C2 Jolla Community Phone - 4G LTE bands/channels/frequencies - #9 by jovirkku
Maybe Canada is better, but probably xperias have a better chance (III is out and most likely to work, check with your provider, someone roaming in Canada said he had no problems, but that might require changing your mobile operator, IV/V are in constant state of about to be released since a year, so have patience, it will probably be rough for a couple releases after first too though, current state is not daily drivable and no android app support (and a bunch of big issues like no camera support and battery level stuck etc))
Edit: and even if you go for xperia 10III you will need to jump through extra hoops like using vpn to buy a license, but hopefully jolla can cash in on this current situation/fad, just like mozilla could with manifest v2 fiasco, time will tell
EDIT: See below - SFOS on 10 III works with FIDO!
Hi! I am from Canada and I go back and forth between Canada and the US regularly using this phone as my daily driver. I have a Sony Xperia 10iii running SailfishOS.
I have no problems getting on Telus, Bell, or Rogers as roaming networks with my US SIM from T-Mobile. That is the only network that functions in the US by the way. However, I got a Telus SIM and for some reason I couldn’t get it working; I could only get that to work when I returned to the US. Telus told me the device is not supported; Bell thinks they will support it. Clearly the network carrier matters.
Anyway, I will experiment with the major providers and potentially with the 10II and report back.
SailfishOS is terrific because it is a real alternative – a working, everyday, daily driver alternative – to Apple and Android and based in the EU. It would be great to get more data on how to get this phone online in Canada.
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FIDO WORKS!!! Spreadsheet edited!
Telus failed to connect. Bell kicked me off. BUT my Xperia 10 III running SFOS v.5.0.0.62 is registered on Fido with 4G and full LTE capabilities, as indicated by NetMon.
(Sometimes it seems to kick down to 3.5G but it oscillates, it has found 4G and registered on the network with LTE.)
I do not know if this means it works on Rogers or not. Fido has a 4G LTE limit and does not use Rogers’ 5G capabilities at this time.
I also registered on Chatr and that only got me on 3.5G.
My Xperia 10 II when on stock Android registered to Fido on 4G. When I flashed it to SFOS5, and it only registered to 3.5G and seemed to have trouble finding 4G LTE.
Next time I’m in Canada I will try troubleshooting to see what works. I was informed that Canada is shutting down its 3G networks in the summer of 2025 so I don’t really want to be riding the same anxiety train I did three years ago when this happened in the USA…
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I would seriously err on the side of caution. Canadian providers have been sunsetting 3G. Depending on your carrier you may not be able to make any calls: without VoLTE you will not be connected to 3G, ie no ringback tone and your call will never reach the network. Much of the debate approaches this from the wrong angle, with how the phone technically supports bands from X, Y and Z carrier. I’m here to bring the sad news that compatibility isn’t contingent on band support alone.
It has been a constant struggle with Telus over the past few months, where I’ve encountered a problem with outbound calls randomly dying at exactly 15 minutes on Sailfish. Long story short, I believed this was a problem with Sailfish; only to find the problem to persist on stock android. This is strange - Sailfish handled VoLTE flawlessly, so why did it start choking the past few months?
This brings us to the crux of the problem. It does not matter if your phone is compatible with your carrier’s bands. They now block off VoLTE from any IMEIs not associated with those bought in Canada, or those not purchased from the carrier itself. The only way around this is to call (through another phone, lol) their call centers, speak to heavily accented voices from the other side of the world who can barely shoestring English words together, and beg them to register your IMEI for IMS. They will try to convince you that it is a fault with your phone, and that you need to upgrade to their phone plans. You will have to escalate it to a higher level tech, create a ticket, and truly make a huge deal out of the situation to reclaim basic calling functionality. Some have reported that even this may no longer work, as corporate is “no longer whitelisting IMEIs”.
If you were curious about the earlier 15-minute problem, my hypothesis is that it was due to some form of verification occurring every 15 minutes, which only occurred for outbound calls. It appears NOT to be a band/VoLTE problem. To diagnose this, you can compute the band associated with the EARFCN checked on CellMate. If you thought it was a band problem, fruitlessly flashing different ROM regions from Emma will not solve this. Trust me, I’ve tried almost all of them.
The software fix for this, if you do not desire a humiliating waste of time tardwrangling clueless techs, is to spoof your non-Canadian purchased phone to a supported model. This involves rooting stock android with magisk first, then flashing an .mbn file with EfsTools while on stock android. The software involved requires a Windows PC. That is a hard requirement and VMs will not work out of the box for this purpose. Flashing Sailfish after this process will most likely (85% CI) preserve the .mbn files and lead to a working phone.
This excellent guide on XDA covers the full process. One major exception is DO NOT flash the stock .mbn files on your phone, they will not work. Use the .mbn files for the Pixel instead. You can always flash over other files to replace the existing ones if you do mess this up.
This will be, of course, a bit daunting to the average non-tech savvy person to figure out. What is quite concerning is that carrier changes of this scale hasn’t been particularly well documented, thus taking most embarrassingly long hours of troubleshooting to get a working phone. Granted, so many phone models will be affected by this and only rootable ones are eligible for this fix. It comes as no surprise, then, that a good portion of customers just accept this fate and get a new piece of e-waste.
To the OP: the question is, is it even worth it? I’ve stuck with Sailfish for over a year, during which my X10III has suffered from audio issues known for years on this forum. The pulseaudio fixes introduces their own set of problems, crippling the call/call recording experience. There is no true “escape” from Google either, in the sense that you will need microG for notifications for your android apps, which is anonymized but useless if your notifications include private data in and of itself. Not everything uses Unifiedpush and that is a compromise you will have to make. Maybe you can deal with the lack of AGPS and taking longer for a fix while searching for directions. Because good luck finding microG-equivalent AGPS/NLP support implemented on the base Sailfish level… Or perhaps you’re fine missing calls because notifications and calls either break audio or route through the speakers even with headphones plugged in. Or your email client (eg tutanota) refusing to work because of an outdated webview you can’t upgrade, etc…
The Xperias themselves are wonderful phones, however, in terms of retaining a 3.5mm jack, and microsd card. It’s an absolute joy to use especially if you don’t mind putting in a little work with a less-than-ideal carrier.
TLDR: may require some elbow grease to work (carrier dependent) and sailfish itself may be buggy
Rogers does work. Didn’t quite see if it was VoLTE or not (I assume so), but it worked with both the 10 III and 10 V. Will have to confirm before any edits to the wiki agreement made, but that’s another anecotal data point
Telus like you said does not work, but this can be mitigated with the .mbn workaround. I had Fizz at one point last year before the sunsetting and that worked (unsure if VoLTE). Audio quality was extremely terrible however, to the point it sounded to my conversation partner that I was underwater talking through the whirring engine of a submarine.
Never had Bell so I can’t report on that.
I was back home last year and managed to get decent connectivity with Rogers. I had to fiddle a bit, though and sadly, don’t recall. That was with an xperia 10iii.
My preferred mode of communication. Back masked and it’s divine.