Fairphone 4 supports 4G calling (VoLTE) in USA with /e/OS 1.6

/e/OS Devices Fairphone
, , , ,
1

Hello.

I purchased a Murena Fairphone 4 while visiting family in Europe and have been using it in the USA for several months now. My carrier is Mint Mobile (T-Mobile MVNO), and I am happy to report that the /e/OS 1.6 update has made it possible to enable 4G calling!

Initially, the phone would drop down from 5G to 3G or 2G for calling and then reconnect to 5G after the call finished. When T-Mobile started shutting down 2G/3G here in my area of the USA, I enabled Wifi calling (VoWifi), which had recently been added to /e/OS. Now, a short wait later, 4G calling can be enabled, and it works!

The only remaining issues for me:

  • There is no visual voicemail for my carrier (Mint Mobile), which probably needs to be addressed by the carrier itself.

  • There are occational issues with the proximity sensor not turning the screen off during a call.

I can now fully recommend the Fairphone 4 to anyone in the USA!

And the Murena Fairphone 4 seems to be the best de-googled phone you can get that also works in America. Hopefully they will become more available to us in the future.

Thank you to all of the developers that made this possible!

8 Likes
2

There are a couple visual voicemail apps. I have used Youmail with success. If you are open to a third party app.

3

I’m looking just now for the best quality phone that will work in the US. This is good to know.

Theoretically, OnePlus 9 Pro should work. I’m asking around to verify. That would be even a little better and actually less expensive.

4

I’ve thought about buying a Fairphone, but in addition to the coverage/carrier support issue, I’ve been concerned about the warranty, in particular regarding exchanges/repairs in the event of a faulty component. Then when they released the Fairphone 4, they basically solved the carrier issue, but they took away the headphone jack, which seriously dissuaded me from buying a Fairphone. I don’t buy their reasons for eschewing it.

5

Thank you for confirming that both vowifi and volte work on this phone. It is of great importance as you explain.
It looks like it is the best smartphone choice with /e/ is as murena one is older and do not have great support.
I am currently using another phone with a European carrier in europe but the e os developers have added visual voicemail in the past year and MMS reliability by modifying the AP information in the builds. This is great support even if it means listening to everybody’s complaints about their own carrier.
Hope they get proper financial support to continue with sustained development. I have subscribed for a murena cloud plan ^^

6

I forgot to come back to this community to update this post, but news that the Murena Fairphone 4 is now available in the USA has brought me back.

While I personally only use apps from Droidify (modern F-Droid app store with auto-update functionality), and there are no FOSS visual voicemail apps available, I think this is a solution that would be acceptable for most people. I don’t consider visual voicemail to be very important, so the lack of it doesn’t bother me.

I haven’t had issues with the proximity sensor in a while (months?). I don’t know when the issue was fixed, but I am glad it is.

There are no more unresolved issues with this phone.

2 Likes