Sailfish in the USA

My 10iii has been working fine in T-Mobile in USA, as I have previously posted. But to encourage you further, my son has had a 10ii and only yesterday I finally took the time to get the VoLTE configured with hackman’s prescribed settings. Works beautifully and, as he points out in his post, MMSes can even be received when on WiFi. I even changed my MMS settings on my 10iii to match and functionality looks normal.

The thing I had to do in July was call T-Mobile tech support and update our accounts to show VoLTE compatible. They did some sort of reset, told me to reboot phone, and all was well and had been since.

2 Likes

Do you remember what those settings were? This thread is long enough that I’m having trouble finding it.

I’m slowly getting things to work but still have problems with SMS/MMS. Would like to figure out group messaging too. I did talk to a very helpful tech person at T-Mobile and they did say that my 10iii will work on their network using SFOS with no issues so it sounds like a settings thing?

there is no group mms in sailfishos

Interesting. I was told by t-mobile that my 10ii was supported until after tons of calls and ages of them doing “verification” I was told that the 10ii was not supported by their network and I’d have to get a new phone. I wonder if they’ll lock out the iii eventually too.

Here’s the link:

1 Like

can you please format the code example - it is useless if not formatted
thank you

It’s a link to elsewhere on this forum. You can click the arrow at the top right to expand it (where it’s already formatted), or click the blue titlebar to visit the post itself.

2 Likes

hi all,

what is the current status of sailfish is the US? I recently tried to get a xperia 10 plus working, but i am unable to get calls on ATT. Everything else works except the VoLTE. From what it looks like, i need to get the 10 iii phone. However, I am not sure what carrier will work with that phone. I am hoping Google Fi could work with that phone.

I use a t-mobile sim1 and Swedish 3 as sim2. Both works sort of fine in Colorado. Although the Swedish sim works fine with data/calling/sms, volte and mms is no go. On the other hand, mms doesn’t work well in Sweden either. With the T-Mobile sim everything works fine, even Volte.
I use my 10iii with 2 sims, although I prefer my XA2, but then Volte is no go.

1 Like

I’m going to add my two cents here. Through a quick scroll I didn’t find it, but maybe it was mentioned before, in which case I apologise.

I am presently in the USA. At home, I use an Italian Iliad sim card without any problems.

I bought a prepaid Ultramobile sim card here, which works well for my needs (data and texts; haven’t called yet, but it even registered on VoLTE once, I think).

BUT, if I put them in together, the Iliad card gets “deregistered”, and doesn’t connect anymore, while the Ultra keeps working as before.

The only idea I came up with is that maybe there’s some sort of conflict. Iliad uses AT&T’s network, while Ultra (Walmart’s MVNO) uses T-Mobile. When I try to select SIM1 (Iliad’s) network manually, only T-Mobile shows up.
If I insert only Iliad’s card, AT&T networks show up.

So, maybe two different carriers cannot work in the same phone?

Here in the USA, only T-Mobile and MVNOs which use the T-Mobile network can register with IMS and enable calls using VoLTE. SMS, MMS and data also work on these networks. SMS, MMS and data work with AT&T and any MVNO that uses AT&T. Keep in mind, both T-Mobile and AT&T maintain white lists for phones. MVNOs are permitted to use their own device whitelists for the most part. Puremobile (AT&T GSM-A) works great for data, SMS and MMS. US Mobile (on the white T-Mobile GSM-T SIM) works great with the Xperia 10 ii and 10 iii for data, SMS, MMS and calling. The Xperia 10 iii has very limited service outside of major metropolitan areas due to lacking support for most GSM-T bands used for service coverage in suburban, rural and indoor locations.

4 Likes

The Xperia 10 iii has very limited service outside of major metropolitan areas due to lacking support for most GSM-T bands used for service coverage in suburban, rural and indoor locations.

I’m visiting near Austin, TX, and indeed, X10III is often sitting in 2.5G mode, unable to upgrade to 4G.

Do y’all know what the situation is for upcoming X10IV or V devices - are those also missing critical US bands?

EDIT not ideal, maybe 5G helps if support ever arrives on SFOS

unfortunately, Xperia 10 III, IV, and V will all work exactly the same on SFOS, as they all have the same LTE channels. (however, if/when SFOS supports 5G, IV and V should work better than III since they add n41)

in particular, all are missing B2=1900MHz which is the most important one for T-Mobile, and also the B66 extension of B4.

3 Likes

The 10iii and 10iv both have problems on T-Mobile in areas served by B2 and B12, which is mostly suburban. Lack of B66 and B71 reduce rural coverage dramatically as well. Inside loop 1604 in San Antonio coverage is acceptable with B5. Outside that and you’ll have trouble. The 10ii coverage, on the other hand, is very good lacking only the B71 band. I’m working on VoLTE now for the 1 ii, but it’s a big lift for a side project.

2 Likes

I’m visiting near Austin, TX, and indeed, X10III is often sitting in 2.5G mode, unable to upgrade to 4G.

Any thoughts on what might be going on with this?

Reboot, and now I also discovered, systemctl restart ofono immediately gets me back on 4G.

Toggling flight mode or SIM slot - doesn’t help, phone reconnects radio on 2.5G

This is on T-Mobile, and I’m roaming from EU.

I just installed Ofono Logger to get a closer look maybe, but not sure what I’m looking for.

It’s not you. What hackman328 and teleshoes wrote is pretty much it. The phone’s 4G frequency bands are a sub-optimal fit for US use. (Actually, it’s sub-optimal for use in much of North America when you click through all the country/carrier options on kimovil.com.) So your Xperia 10 iii will end up in 2G mode roaming on T-Mobile, the only carrier left in the US that supports that technology anymore. :frowning:

Worse yet, T-Mo has been letting 2G service degrade while promising multiple times to shut it down completely. The last missed deadline was just last week on April 2. Why they’ve blinked at pulling the plug multiple times is anyone’s guess, but the big money is on embedded wireless device customers begging them to keep the service alive until they’ve switched out all their old hardware – ATMs, burglar alarms, lo-jack, scales that phone home your weight so you can get depressed watching the trend on your phone . . .

So your Xperia 10 iii will end up in 2G mode roaming on T-Mobile, the only carrier left in the US that supports that technology anymore.

I’m not sure this explains why restarting ofono helps get back on 4G right away, esp. vs flight mode or sim slot toggle.

Why isn’t the phone able to upgrade an online connection automatically, like ofono restart does?

1 Like

an excellent question. i have to restart ofono all the time to restore LTE connection after being somewhere that its spotty.

edit: pasted wrong quote

Yeah, exactly what I’m seeing. @rainemak do you know if there’s already a bug report open for something that looks similar enough? It feels like a subtle ofono bug. I’m not finding anything matching on Forum.