4G not working on FP3

I’ve had a FP3 for a few months now but the 4G has never worked, even though 3G/2G/WiFi has always worked fine. I’m in the UK on the Phone Co-op (EE) network.

4G worked without a problem on my old FP2 on the same network in the same places. My partner also still has an FP2 on Phone Co-op which gets perfect 4G signal, so I know it isn’t an issue with 4G signal where I live. Even though my phone seems to be stuck on 3G it still indicates I have pretty much full signal most of the time.

My preferred network type is already set to 2G/3G/4G auto in Android settings, and if I limit it to 3G or 2G it’ll change to them quite happily but it still won’t go any faster than 3G when I switch it back again. Toggling Enhanced 4G LTE mode doesn’t make any difference either.

I only have one simcard in the phone and I got it new with the phone a few months ago. I’ve tried swapping it to the Sim 2 slot but the problem stays the same.

My APN settings are the same as those listed on the Phone Co-op website, and I’ve tried the APN reset to default option in Android settings but it doesn’t make any difference.

Any ideas what could be causing the problem?

Means you have tried your new SIM card in the FP2 as well?

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Have you tried the SIM of your partner on your FP3?

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Here’s what I found on the Phone Co-op website:

All new connections have access to 4G. If you signed up with us before July 2016 you may need to activate 4G. Depending on how long you have been a customer, you may also need a new SIM card.

So yea, call them and have a chat. I’m in UK too, on Sky(O2) and I got 4G in 99% of cases.

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Thanks for the suggestions :slight_smile: I hadn’t thought about swapping simcards between handsets. I had the impression that handsets are locked to a specific simcard so you can’t just swap sims between them, no? That might just be a UK thing though, not sure.

Unfortunately I’ve already sent my old FP2 back for recycling so I can’t do any testing with that.

Not yet, and I won’t get a chance to do that until Saturday but I’ll give it a shot then.

I saw that on their website too but I’ve only had a FP2 since 2018 so I didn’t think it would apply. I also had a truly terrible customer service experience with Phone Co-op when buying my FP3. I’ll spare you the details but it took about six weeks to get it all sorted out and get all the refunds I was due, so given Phone Co-op’s staggering levels of incompetence I was hoping that this 4G issue could be resolved by changing some incorrect setting on my phone rather than having to get them involved. If the simcard stuff doesn’t make any difference then I suppose I’ll have no choice but to phone them!

I’ll have a play around with the simcards this weekend and see how it goes :slight_smile:

weirdly, I had excellent CS with them.

My provider, Tesco, I think is on O2 too. I get 4G when I enter the city. So I expect it’ll be account related and not phone or network related.

best of luck :slight_smile:

Co-op are on EE not O2 and ironically they charge more for a one month rolling contract. I mean one thing is ethical company another thing providing subpar service for more money.

SIM-lock still exists, but I think up to now there is no such mechanism active in any Fairphone. Otherwise I believe Fairphone probably would not cooperate with such a provider as the “fair” aspect would conflict.

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Fairphones are indeed not simlocked.

Even then, a simlocked handset is not locked to a specific SIM card, just to an operator (and sometimes the locks for prepaid / monthly subscriptions / business are different.)

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