I switched my pre-existing Three SIM card to my new Fairphone 5, and the majority of my calls involve good audio for me, but the other person saying they can’t hear me well. Sometimes the call is OK for the first few minutes and then deteriorates.
I have turned off Wifi calling, but I can’t turn off 4G calling (VoLTE) because Three does not support 3G calling any more having turned off the 3G masts. I guess this means I can’t use a Fairphone at all on the Three network. If so, can anyone point me to a list of UK networks that will be compatible?
(This also happened with my previous phone which was a Fairphone 3, after Three turned the 3G masts off a few months ago, but I was hoping that this issue would not continue when I got the new model!)
When I search for Three UK in this forum I can see that they have a history of not always working perfectly fine with Fairphones, but I don’t see that in general it isn’t working.
So you need either VoLTE or VoWifi to establish a phone call because Three also doesn’t have any 2G network anymore. If you disable VoWifi (or WiFi calling) then I’d check the signal strength during the call. If it’s weak, try it in a location with better reception. A breaking 4G call can have the symptoms that you describe.
For indoor use I find the WiFi calling option quite useful: Good chances for good signal, less power needed to boil our heads. What does it look like if you use that? Is that stable (of course assuming that you’re not sitting at the edge of the WiFi’s reach)? If that doesn’t work well, either, then there are chances that is really has to do with Three.
Oh, and one thing more: The fact that a SIM card works well in the previous phone does not necessarily mean that it must work in a different phone, too. Depending on the age of the card, swapping it against a new one seems to have resolved some issues for others already.
Maybe I am misinformed but isn’t GSM the default network for phonecalls to this day? Are you sure you need Internet to make calls? I never did and I switch carriers a lot.
It does sound more like poor network signal connectivity than the phone but it’s hard to say for sure without seeing it in person. However, you asked about other networks - I’ve been on EE without issue on my FP4 for almost 3 years. My sister is on O2 and has had her FP4 since last summer, so I’d say the FP5 will work on both of them OK if you feel it’s time to change!
You don’t need internet like in a mobile data connection (technically it is internet, though), but in times when there are only packet-based networks (“the internet”) left you’ll need a layer on top of that to send voice over that network. The most pure version of that would be Voice over IP (VoIP) but with the different radio access technologies (RAT) below that it makes sense to have that called out in its name, too. This is what brings us to VoLTE, VoWifi or VoNR. And in case there are reception issues in the mobile network (just guessing), using VoWifi is something to exclude those.
And no, GSM is only rarely still used for phone calls. GSM is what your phone has when it shows 2G or only a G. In many parts of the world these networks are shutdown these days, together with 3G (UMTS) which where connection based networks as opposed to the packet based mobile generations 4G and above.
I think you may just be happy about your phone being able to handle all that in the background for you
After to speaking to Three’s customer service, I did a phone settings reset. This improved things, but I was still finding that the caller couldn’t hear me for a few seconds every couple of minutes, including right at the start of every call.
Interestingly, a friend who is an iPhone user on the Three network told me that she has the same issue, so it seems it’s nothing to do with Fairphone!
