Well, there’s not much we can do, other than workarounds, until Jolla gets VoLTE working. The effective death of SFOS in the US is when the last US carrier shuts off 3G/2G. The work needed is pretty complicated, and some parts of it would touch the proprietary bits of the OS.
I also would. I wonder if it’d be possible to set up a bounty?
2 Likes
And SFOS did not implement VoLTE 'cause this protocol is only used in US and NOT in EU, Asia, Russia, etc?
It’s also used in the EU. I suspect they’re going to try to push it off until the last possible second (EU carriers also start requiring VoLTE or Rostelecom starts requiring it)
So looks like VoLTE is inevitable requirement worldwide, unless there is an alternative future protocol (5G or whatever comes next) and SFOS plans on committing efforts there and skipping VoLTE.
VoLTE is already used in the UK - my iphone 12 uses it if available; if not it just drops to 2G/3G to make the call.
I suspect that, despite what is being said publicly by Jolla on the implementation of VoLTE, they are already planning or working towards implementing VoLTE as soon as they can. It will simply not be credible to sell a phone OS that … ahem … will not be able to make phone calls. Can you imagine the damage it would do to their public reputation (even if their current target market currently does not require VoLTE) if they didn’t? We learnt today in the community meeting that Jolla are only really concentrating on corporate business customers and not consumers. How many new business customers do you think they will get when they try to sell a phone OS that can’t (or soon won’t be able to) make or receive phone calls? No business would take the risk, especially ones where their employees internationally travel. Reviews of the OS would be panned and Jolla’s credibility for selling a modern alternative phone OS would disappear fast. If they are genuinely have no plans for VoLTE then it will either be a sudden coffee selling moment or EOL for sailfish for anything but a hobby OS.
2 Likes
Their only clients are Russia and some various smaller countries, none of which are in any hurry to pick up VoLTE. I strongly suspect it’ll only be seriously worked on if Rostelecom starts requiring it.
I am also an avid Blackberry fan and have had Blackberry 10 phones for years (and still fire them up occasionally for fun). BB 10 went EOL a few years back and also is not VoLTE capable. The chatter across the globe on the BB forums is that on an increasing number of carriers, even ones that have yet to shutdown 2G/3G, phones that are non-VoLTE can not even be activated anymore on these carriers - even though they could still technically make calls on GSM or CDMA. Blackberry 10 devices are therefore turning into wifi only devices. The end is nigh!
I don’t think activation blocks are going to be a major issue for Sailfish, as they only check if the hardware is capable (via IMEI lookup) - which the Xperia 10, XA2, and maybe X are. You still wouldn’t be able to make calls though.
3 Likes
Then their international Sailfish X community will gradually disappear. Jolla need to be more forward looking than just one giant customer - too many eggs in one basket!
1 Like
I understand you, but a tremendous missing opportunity leaving the US behind. The world has changed a lot in the last 7 years and Americans are now even more concerned about privacy than Europeans are, and also willing to pay more too.
On the other hand, Europe is a complicated market that requires different marketing strategies, lets not even mention availability to capital, it is very hard to grow fast in Europe, and in this market’s segment speed is crucial.
A privacy conscious hardware and OS European company would would now become immensely popular in the US, but of course it needs to work with the peculiarities of US carriers (mainly VoLTE, handling carriers and their frequencies), aspect that companies like old Nokia, Sony, SailfishOS, /e/ or Fairphone do not seem to be willing to accommodate. Soon enough, some American company (with foreign capital, including European!) will crack the US market and, subsequently, the European one too…and Europeans, once again, will scratch their heads on why is the US always that end up with all these large technological companies.
3 Likes
Given who is paying their bills it’s more like Россия прежде всего 
1 Like
I’ve been doing this for decades (starting back in Nokia/Symbian days and later the N900) partially to dodge the insane roaming charges. It was much safer to just buy a local sim card and avoid all unpleasant surprises abroad.
1 Like
Huh, yeah, it’s kind of like Sailfish is focused on other parts of the world. If only there were a special forum thread for those using it in a particular place.
1 Like
I agree here. I’m starting a company which builds private services and some hardware, it’s always been a pipe dream of the team and I to tackle the phone.
What’s the most stable SIP service been in your experience? Would there be a way to port my number in?
Well, I started with GrandCentral but then Google acquired and destroyed them like they always do.
I’ve tried various services over the years but then settled for nexmo.com largely because of their nice SMS API.
And yes, you should be able to port US numbers to nexmo.
This issue has been discussed here:
and here:
New Year’s Eve Surprise Thread
Basically, the story is this:
(1) T-mobile is shutting down it’s 2G and 3G networks on October 1st.
(2) AT&T is following suite in the 1st quarter of 2022.
(3) In addition to this, AT&T is instituting a device whitelist so that even if your phone is VoLTE capable, if it isn’t on the whitelist it will be banned from the network. I see this as a sneaky way to strike down BYOD for AT&T and it’s MVNOs, if not an outright data mining scheme by insisting it provide the handsets.
(4) Barring the implementation of VoLTE in sailfish, phones with this OS will not work in the United States after the 1st quarter of 2022 barring some tinkering.
Although it won’t work for AT&T and it’s MVNOs (see the aforementioned whiteliest), it may still be possible to connect to T-mobile and/or it’s MVNO’s using the 4G capability of the Xperia series on a data only basis. That is, the built in phone and messaging app in Sailfish won’t work at all, but the browser and email functions will.
If this is the case, then you can install a VOIP app (I chose TextFree, there are others) send/receive messages and voice calls over the data stream of the phone.
While no one knows if this will work for sure in the future , Tello (a T-mobile MVNO) says the data only conection for non VoLTE phones will be permitted as T-mobile has announced no plans to use a whitelist. I am using that combination right now (Tello + Textfree) and it works (the caller can hear some echoing if you leave mute off so you need to use the mute button like the transmit switch of the radio to talk, and then mute when you’re done talking).
Hope this helps. I really hope Jolla does something about 5G and VoLTE. Rostelcom may not want to deploy it right now, but the rest of the world is moving in that direction rapidly and ensuring that the OS is compatible with this technology is more important than worrying about a new handset right now.
Sounds interesting - are you able to share any details?
TextFree seems to be Android/iOS only so this is a big no-no.