Current status Sailfish and devices for USA?

What’s the current status of using Sailfish and most compatible devices, from Jolla compatible device list, for USA mobile networks? Particularly using MVNOs.

1 Like

There’s the Xperia 10 II and 10 III. With paid version of SFOS, these have VoLTE support so they can be used on 4G networks. Or network, really, since AT&T doesn’t like the devices and you’ve gotta use T-Mobile or a T-Mo reseller. It’s missing some 4G bands for T-Mobile. Especially band 71, which is used outside of metropolitan areas. Depending on where you use it, it might work fine or you might end up missing calls all the time and not being able to make a call when you need to. If you’re the type that wouldn’t talk on a phone even if you lost a bet, this might not be a problem.

3G is gone in the US and community ports lack Volte. So, with any other SFOS capable device, even one that’s 4G capable frequency-wise, you will have 2G service only which T-Mobile has promised to discontinue at any moment. They’ve missed 3 threatened cutoff dates, so that either means it’ll work for the foreseeable future or could be turned off any day now depending on your viewpoint. 2G service has also been seriously degraded, so voice quality may or may not be acceptable – YMMV. If a data-only device is acceptable to you, you’re choices are much broader.

I’ve used the Xperia 10 II on on T-Mo and US Mobile (with the T-Mo SIM), and both work okay-ish sometimes, but I can’t rely on it as a primary device since I’ve got elderly relatives and others with health issues and I need to be reachable even in dead zones like my basement and my grocery store and other random places.

4 Likes

Thanks for the excellent summary. As much as I long for the Nokia N9 meego experience again, or reasonable facsimile, SFOS will not work for me unfortunately. We live in a rural area and were T-Mobile customers that is until they did multiple tower maintenances and upgrades that resulted in unreliable connectivity even with iPhone 13 phones. So unreliable we changed to US Mobile on the Verizon network. Oh well. :cry:

T-Mobile just made their latest possibly believable threat to turn off 2G in the US. Now it’s September 1st, 2024. They’ve balked the last three times, so smart managers playing the percentages will expect them to do it again, if I may be allowed a baseball metaphor.

2 Likes

Has anyone experience with sfos in the usa as a tourist? Not sure how roaming works there, can you just select a specific carrier, or if it’s dependent on your original operator agreement (in EU in theory you should be free to chose any, but some would just refuse to go above 2g or even allow my xiii to connect at all), so any firsthand experience of travelling to us with sfos device would be welcome

I spent three weeks in Canada (BC) and USA (OR,WA) this summer with my 10III SFOS v4.6 roaming with a Finnish SIM (Telia). I was expecting some issues due to different frequencies, possible problems with LTE support etc. but didn’t really come across anything network-related. I used mobile data daily for messaging and browsing, sent/received the occasional SMS but did only very few voice calls. I had network selection on automatic and never attempted any manual configuration (not sure it if even was possible).

During the trip I had two issues with the device - on arrival to Vancouver my phone chose an incorrect timezone with the automatic selection; it ended up in Toronto time zone, i.e. three hours off the correct time. I think at that point it was using the Bell Canada network. Also, a couple of times the device UI slowed down when moving in dense urban environments - probably due to wifi being enabled and the wifi scanning slowing it down to a crawl.

4 Likes

I too was recently in USA and Canada with my X10 III and had no issues whatsoever. My phone auto joined/roamed to AT&T with VoLTE enabled.
I am on Vodafone in Australia. I didn’t call anyone but had data and sms with no issues.

4 Likes