🏒 Canadian Fairphoners! 🇨🇦

[alfie_cdn]

Thinking of ordering a Fairphone to Canada from Clove, but with the additional cost of shipping and customs, I wonder if it’s worth it. In order to repair a Fairphone, how do you get the spare parts? More shipping fees, isn’t there?
Should I just wait for a trip to Europe to buy a Fairphone and buy spare parts while I’m there?

[NGnius]

It’s almost definitely worth it to wait until you can skip custom fees (and especially brokerage fees, if you can’t self-clear) and shipping fees. Some replacement parts you can only get from the Fairphone store too, so you have to pay for shipping twice – once with the web store and once with the package forwarding service.

Honestly the economic justification for buying a Fairphone isn’t a very strong one outside of supported countries. There are some newer repairable phones that might be easier to get your hands on for cheaper (HMD devices, mostly). If you care about more than just saving a few bucks though, Fairphone beats all of those in other aspects.

[CFA]

I have a fairphone 3 bought through ebay. Although it is a good product, marketing and support are terrible outside of Europe. The same goes for the Shiftphone, my 1st choice, European only. The only alternative may be the Terracube if they can stay in business, at least they ship parts and product world wide when available.

[Juki]

Hi, I have had a F3+ for 5 years now that I purchased in France and brought back with me to Montreal, Canada where I live. I’ve received a communication from my phone operator (Videotron) that says that Canada will stop using the 3G technology as of July 31st and will use VoLTE instead. Apparently my F3+ is not compatible with that system? Or so the communications about this changement say.

Is there anyone else in my situation? I’ve wrote to Fait phone about this more than a month ago but still haven’t got any response.

A plugin that would allow me to use VoLTE technology with my F3+ ? Maybe the F5 is compatible ? This is so frustrating because my phone still works well, and it is totally contradictory with Fairphone’s philosophy and mine as well to throw away something that stills works !

I hope someone can help me

[yvmuell]

Moved your post here. The FP3 is in general 4G and VoLTE compatible. Did you test it, is the setting available but not working?

Reg your question to Fairphone: I guess the only answer will be, we dont know, we dont sell to Canada and dont support there.

Edit: there is FP Angel in Montreal, maybe contact them directly

The Fairphone Angels Program and Map (Local support by community members)

The discussion and questions about this topic are located here Fairphone Angels are active volunteers in your area that offer their expertise to assist you. Most Angels cannot offer all services and as volunteers, they’re not always available. So don’t be mad if they don’t answer in time Consider opening a topic on the forum to receive help from other members for non-local or complicated issues. The Customer Service team from Fairphone is also there to he…

[Lembramol]

While I don’t know the answer specifically for Fairphone, in general VoLTE will only work if the model has been sold in your country. Because VoLTE needs a profile for your specific phone company in its firmware, and the manufacturer will generally only add the relevant profiles if they do business in the country.

[yvmuell]

Thats not correct in this generalized way, e.g. the FP works in Australia with VoLTE with some provider although not supported by Fairphone, thus its better to wait for comments from those using FPs in Canada.

[Lembramol]

You are right.

I looked at the newest Fairphone 5 rom, and it does include profiles from all over the world. See attached list.

For North America (NA), we have profiles called Rogers, Telus and Bell that sound like Canadian providers. Not Freedom/Wind though.

Of course, being on the list is no guarantee that it actually works. Fairphone probably copies the profiles from somewhere else, and only tests those that are commercially relevant. We don’t know if a specific profile does in fact instruct the phone to activate VoLTE.

fairphone5_profiles_apr2025.pdf (76.0 KB)
(Taken from FP5-UT2M-factory\images\NON-HLOS.bin\image\modem_pr\mcfg\configs\mcfg_sw\mbn_sw.txt)

[CFA]

I have been using the Fairphone 3 on Eastlink and now bell. They both use 4G and VoLTE.

[fp_user_t]

Hi there,

Glad I found this local community here on fp. I got a FP5 /e/OS, am with freedom mobile in the GTA and are having connectivity issues:

No connection, sometimes signal, sometimes data only, sometimes both (data and voice), then gone again. I was able to call out once to voicemail. Other attempts to call out went into nowhere. Additionally, I was unable to receive any calls. I did received the missed call message though (text/sms). However, there was a delay of several minutes. I tried another freedom mobile sim card and same.

I read FP5 generally works in Canada, e.g. on reddit (/r/fairphone):

• 1adhsg1/fairphone_5_would_it_work_in_canada
• 1bnv4ce/got_a_fairphone_5_delivered_to_canada_last
• snxgjg/any_canadian_users

Also, according to fp itself, there should be at least some kind of coverage:

• support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/8873147802257-Global-Network-Coverage

After having these issues, I had another look and found some were not recommending freedom mobile and FP 5 due to some missing bands: https://www.reddit.com/r/freedommobile/comments/177tfpf/fairphone_5_compatibility_with_freedom/

Freedom Mobile bands (freedommobile website): …/about-device-compatibility

Also found this overview, unsure how accurate this information is, though to me as a non-phone-band-specialist, it looks like it could theoretically work in Canada (kimovil website): frequency-checker/CA/fairphone-5

1. Might there be a setting on the phone I need to set to make it work?
2. Does anyone have a recommendation which pre-paid carrier would be the best choice for the FP5 in the GTA/Ontario?

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks folks,
T

[fp_user_t]

Turns out it‘s just one setting: Settings > Network & internet > SIMs > 4G Calling (has to be on)

I got a new SIM card to make sure it‘s not the card. Data access was ok again, voice still having issues: unable to call out and not receiving any calls.

Turned on Wi-Fi Calling - nothing. Changed Preferred network type, even to 4G - nothing. Then finally tried 4G Calling and it immediately worked.

Might be related to FP not having band B13. Perhaps freedom mobile uses it in in their Home zone. Either way, currently it works with 4G Calling.

kimovil offers a good bands overview of various carriers and relate it to a phone, e.g. FP5.

[AnotherElk]

@fp_user_t

Then finally tried 4G Calling and it immediately worked.

Might be related to FP not having band B13.

4G calling is also known as VoLTE (Voice over LTE).
This has to be enabled when being in areas or when using carriers without 2G/3G coverage to force the device to use the 4G network for calls and SMS.
Else the device will try to fall back to 2G/3G for calls and SMS, and when there’s no 2G/3G coverage, there will be no calling and SMS while internet will still happily work via 4G.

If you now might ask why this might not be enabled by default, then my guess would be because not so very long ago not every carrier had VoLTE implemented or in every customer plan yet, and 2G/3G mostly started to get phased out only with the emergence of 5G, and in many areas and by many carriers it’s not phased out yet. If perhaps that is not the typical situation in North America, it’s worth to remember that up until now Fairphones are designed in and mainly for Europe.

[misabiko]

Hi, I ordered a FairPhone 5 on May 18 on vireo.de, but the orders has stayed “Open” (well, “Offen”) since then. I emailed their support two weeks later and they said (in english ) they had delays in supplier deliveries, and I emailed FairPhone a week ago about it (request #1277563) but haven’t received a response.
Does anybody know what are the usual delays for vireo to get new phones? Or if there’s a current situation happening?
I don’t know either if the supplier refer to FairPhone directly or if there’s one or more middlemen.

And of course the rumors are coming of a FP6 being announced in about a week, so I might consider the option of trying to get a refund and hop on the FP6 train if it becomes a thing.

[fp_user_t]

Thanks @AnotherElk for your explanation. The ‘4G Calling’ setting has a note saying ‘recommended’. So, if it doesn’t work for someone, it might be worth a try.

I’m happy the FP5 and freedom mobile works in the GTA.

Seems like it’s a matter of finding the right settings: different carriers use different bands by default, then there are various bands they could technically use (we might be able to force them to use a band FP understands). Some carriers support 2/3G, some don’t have 5G yet. Some use VoLTE, some don’t. Plus, it’s all evolving…

Like you said, there’s no guarantee FP5 will work in any region with any carrier. I was aware of this fact and FP is not to blame for a situation in which it doesn’t work. In such a situation, try a different carrier or contact their tech support.

• FP5 bands (scroll to bottom): support.fairphone.com/hc/en-us/articles/8873147802257-Global-Network-Coverage
• Kimovil Check: https://www.kimovil.com/en/frequency-checker/CA/fairphone-5