Hello,
I have exactly the same problem, reported to helpdesk. I have not yet had any solution to this problem.
I have been unable to find a solution to this problem, which is very problematic when using a phone without being exposed to the airwaves all day long;
I hope you will find a solution quickly.
What does this mean? What “airwaves” and how does using the phone without a headset “expose” you to them?
Hi all -
If like me, you’re in the United States, let me save you some time by saying I think a T-Mobile-based carrier is your best bet for your new Murena One. RedPocket Mobile is my vendor of choice.
I want to confirm I tried the Murena One on the AT&T network via RedPocket Mobile, and…I could send and receive texts but not make voice calls nor receive voice calls. Some of you had echoed similar issues above. The benefit of RedPocket, beyond being one of the very cheapest mobile providers in the US, is that they have relationships with not one, but each of the three major US cellular carriers (AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile). It was them who directed me toward T-Mobile.
So instead of the AT&T SIM I have in hand, they’re sending me a T-Mobile network SIM, and they say my phone should work on T-Mobile’s network. A quick check of the T-Mobile bring-your-own-phone website (https://www.t-mobile.com/resources/bring-your-own-phone) confirms after punching in my IMEI that, “Your device is compatible with the T‑Mobile network and can take advantage of our most powerful signal, Extended Range LTE.” So that’s promising; none of the AT&T-based carriers gave such affirmation (nor Verizon, for that matter).
I’ll work to remember to check in back here in a couple days when I have my SIM in hand to verify my anticipated (and now promised via T-Mobile) success.
Beyond that, I’ve already used the other functionality a bunch, this is a truly great phone, and I’m so, so pleased to be one of the first testers of the phone. I’m just following your work from afar here in the US, but /e/os and Murena seem to be a group of folks with purpose, heart, and maybe most importantly, good heads on their shoulders. I think you all are on the right track for both improving privacy, and opening up a new and promising pathway to create alternatives to the big two mobile OS heavyweights - something even Microsoft couldn’t achieve. Cheers, all, and thanks!!
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One minor issue to address. Ever since I turned on the “Night Light” feature, which shifts the coloration to focus on warmer tones, I’ll find the phone will momentarily (for maybe a half-second at a time) snap out of the night light feature as I’m scrolling or typing or whatever. Not at all a big deal, but a bug that you might want to work out. I’ve had Night Light for maybe all but the first day I owned the phone, so it seems unlikely that there was anything I installed that could be causing the issue, but who knows.
Thanks again for all your work! Cheers!
@bspau , thanks for sharing your experience.
I also failed with AT&T, and actually got into an endless loop of pain.
So I had a pretty old phone ( Samsung Galaxy S5 ). It was working ( on my 3rd battery ) but getting a bit unreliable. Apps would just shut down without notice etc. I was holding out for the Murena phone.
So when I got Murena One, I tried to get it going on AT&T and failed. Spent several days going back and forth between a local store ( completely useless ) and the online help ( who did their best but couldn’t get it going ). So finally and “threw in the towel” and said “OK, let’s go back to my old phone”.
And then… I couldn’t get the old ( ancient ! ) phone back on the network either. I could get texts but no calls. Couple more days went by, at this point I’m 4+ days with no phone at all.
So I just lost patience and went out and bought a new Samsung Galaxy S22.
So now I have nice phone with all the modern bells and whistles ( including Android Auto which works with my new vehicle )…but I’m “Fully Googled” again. Not what I wanted.
I turn off as much as I can, especially all the location tracking stuff, but I know Google are still profiting from my information.
I needed an essentially plug and play phone, and Murena One is not that phone, at least not on AT&T.
I’m not ready to move to TMobile. I have better signal with AT&T at my house ( used to have TMobile ) and have a shared family plan with other users in the home on AT&T, so moving network is a big lift.
I’d also like to share that I asked the /e/ help desk if I could return the phone for a refund, and there has been complete silence from their end since I asked that. That was a week ago. I sent a follow up email today. We’ll see what happens. They were full of suggestions for how to get it to work, until I said “look, I’ve spent several days on this, and have no working phone now, I really just need a phone that works, can I just send this back”. Then…“crickets”. I fear I’m stuck with a phone I can’t use.
I do travel to Ireland once a year, so maybe I’ll see does it work on the Vodafone network over there next time I’m there.
Sorry for the delay in the response. Will ask the help desk to respond ASAP.
I’ve just bought my husband a Murena One (it’s his first smartphone and I didn’t want him to be bothered by bloatware and Google accounts). Well, it does the job.
Some battery issues. It takes several hours to fully charge the phone, as mentioned in a previous post of this thread; we’ll try with another cable. Also (but that’s related to the system, not the phone) I turned off the privacy features (phony localization, DNS, and so on) which apparently drained the battery.
And why doesn’t the pinch-and-zoom work in the Message app? Thank you for your answer to a silly question!
In the case of a “first smartphone” I would recommend reliably switching off https://doc.e.foundation/support-topics/advanced_privacy.html until all the features of this advanced subject are fully understood; in my experience this seems to have caused a little less rather than any more battery use.
I can reproduce no pinch and zoom in the default message app (a fork of QKSMS). Within the app however, Settings > Font size can be changed, if this might help.
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So my phone went orange…
Couldn’t read the entire message because it was behind the camera but it said something was triggered by a kernel oops and it was doing something with blkpart and it had a counter going up 16M at a time so I figured I’d better not reset it while it was doing whatever it was doing…
It rebooted afterwards and my stuff is still there so I suspect it was writing a core dump or doing an emergency fsck or something. Seems to work fine now but figured I’d give a heads up
I’m another person in the US who has the issue with mobile networks initially providing service and then getting cut off. I’ve tried Verizon and T-Mobile, and inquired with other carriers such as AT&T, and apparently, the Murena One is NOT COMPATIBLE WITH ANY US CARRIER! If this is truly the case, I’m afraid I will have to return it for a refund. I bought this phone because my old phone suffered the Samsung bloated battery issue, and the Murena One is supposed to have the same, if not better, specs than my other phone (Galaxy S10e), but apparently it’s not good enough or well-known enough for any carrier to activate it. T-Mobile tried, but then got the same issue as when I moved my Verizon network SIM to my Murena phone: works initially but then drops coverage. The store associate said it should have worked, and it started out appearing that it did, but it didn’t last long. I am very frustrated, as I was really hoping to use a phone with /e/OS pre-installed, but apparently in the US you are permanently tied to Google or Apple’s clutches. I’m both mad and disappointed.
WHY are they selling this phone in the US if it does not work in the US???
And of course a day after I receive my phone, it lists as not available in the US. I have a SIM kit for one more carrier I’m going to try, but if this does not work, I’m going to contact support for a refund.
EDIT: Never mind, I found it available in the US if you navigate to the page in another way. However, if this really wasn’t supposed to be on sale in the US, any ways to get to the page should be closed off.
EDIT 2: Well, my last try failed, the last carrier still said it was incompatible, so it’s refund time. It’s really disappointing because I really wanted to use this phone. The problem seems to be that the specs are too low for US carriers to put it on their network (which is really weird because they’ll even take flip phones today, but w/e). From what I’ve read, the problem might be because the US uses “band 4” for most carriers whereas Europe uses “band 3” and being that this phone was mainly designed for Europe, they may not have made the necessary adjustments before marketing the phone in the US.
Hi there,
Murena One for 1 week. I had a lot of issues upgrading to 1.5. It took 2 full resets to get it back to normal.
In general, the finishes are ok.
The screen is barely decent for LCD. Same for performance (for daily use are a bit tight) the Helio P60 is not necessarily the best choice (especially over time, I’m not sure Mediatek continues to provide updated drivers for future updates major days…). Scrolling is generally not smooth at all.
The sound is correct. Reading of empirete ok but a bit slow.
Photo and video side … without comment (even for social networks you have to forget)
I hope that the phone will be entitled to a good follow-up and will pass under android 12 (and at least 13) but I have doubts with the P60…
Jean Philippe
Just an update, I was able to finally get the Murena One working with T-Mobile for a little over a week, and for that week it worked great! I had to use a different phone to activate the SIM card and then plug it into the Murena One. Unfortunately, I dropped it at a restaurant last night and the thin plastic case for it was not able to protect it from damage, so the bottom portion of the screen is broken. When I tried rebooting after dropping it to see if it would help with the screen at all, it then went back to no longer correctly reading the SIM card. I’m going to try installing /e/OS on the other phone I bought if I can (I bought that other phone for that reason after temporarily giving up on the Murena One), but since I’ve only owned this Murena One for a week and a half, and would like to keep using one (if I can avoid breaking it), would a warranty cover a drop like that?
EDIT: Never mind, it appears the warranty would not cover it in this case since the damage was due to my dropping it. Oh, well, it was nice while it was working. My only recommendation would be to look into why there seems to be activation trouble with carriers where it should be supported.
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A few months later. Everything is all right (no more battery issues since I changed the cable, and I changed the Message app to Google messaging via Aurora).
I purchased this phone and Switched from ATT to T-Mobile to use the phone due to hearing that T-Mobile is the only provider that works with the Murena One. It took a few tries at the store for the phone to register the SIM card, but it finally worked. I tested it by calling my wife later that night. It is now the next day, and I am getting the Only Emergency Calls Allowed notice. Did this get resolved? I don’t see a response in the thread. I waited almost a month while this phone sat at a warehouse to clear customs. I really don’t want to have to return it and get a refund, but that may be my only choice. Please help.
I have a murena one since january 2023. It’s my second phone Murena One. The first one had issues and I send it back :
The screen turned orange sometimes
The sound of music was chopped when the screen was standby
The scroll was not good, it made ups and downs
The fingerprint reader was not always working
The battery was drained very fast
So after some messages with the helpdesk, we agreed to exchange the phone.
I received my new murena and I still have issues with it :
The screen turns orange
The sound is chopped when I listen to music with wire headphones.
But the rest is ok… The battery is good and the scroll too.
My boyfriend has the Fairphone 4, I think maybe it was a better choice.
Hi all,
I have a Murena One since November 2022. It was a deliberate decision to buy a low-cost phone for my first steps and experiences with /e/OS, i.e. I knew I wouldn’t have the most modern and powerful device.
In general, I am quite satisfied with the Murena One. Unfortunately, as a non-nerd, I am not able to flawlessly determine whether shortcomings and errors are caused by the device, the operating system or by installed apps. Therefore, it is no easier for me now to go for a more expensive phone than before.
Problems I ran into are:
- frequent restarts or orange screens; since /e/OS 1.13 frequent system crases/frozen screens instead
- no realibale, constant NFC connection (bad for using Ausweis2-App for e-identification)
- screen not reliably turning black/disabled when holding the phone to my ear
- speaker doesn’t turn off when listening to voice messages on my ear (so much for privacy!)
- fingerprint sensor sometimes not working properly
- very poor speaker quality
- slow working camera, not really made for quick snapshots
It is for all these problems that I returned my Murena One two times… The second Time it was terminate for me
Well, like I said, I wanted to learn about /e/ and I want to support this excellent initiative. I think it’s high time for Europe to learn to stand on it’s own feet.
For “emergency cases” like having to use NFC I still have my old Samsung with Google-Android, and some few times for using GoogleMaps or data collecting Flight / Marine trackers 