I have been having serious issues with getting texts and voice to work in many areas (FP3, NYC and Maryland, T-Mobile). I think it’s because of 3g phaseouts
I noticed some comments about toggling airplane mode to trigger connections. I will see if that works when I experience problems.
Toggling airplane mode helps and will usually get SMS working again
Hi all!
I live in Italy and have happily owned a Fairphone 3 since 2020; in one month I’ll be moving to Los Angeles and working there until June 2023. I wonder if I have to purchase another phone or if my Fairphon3 will work fine, and/or if some network operators might work better than others. Does anyone have experience with a Fairphone3 in that area? I don’t mind not having 5G, but I’d like to be able to do Whatsapp calls and things like that + I like going hiking so I’m also interested in how the connection works out of city centers…
Thank you!
Hi and welcome to the forum.
I have no experience of the US but you can do research
Open up the Network section to see the bands and frequencies
Compare to those offered in LA etc.
I am trying to find a replacement USB C port and can’t seem to find anyone that ships to the US. Any suggestions? The solder on the SUB connector was not very good and it snapped off the PCB with little pressure on the USB cable. So far nobody from support will talk to me and my attempts to by a part from a company named clove just resulted in them refunding my order 
If you’re quick, you might want to get in touch with this aspiring FP4 owner: Anyone selling a FP4 (grey)? Perhaps s/he can and is willing to organize the addition of this tiny spare part to his/her shipment.
Normally vireo.de ships to worldwide. The HP is only in German however you could contact them via mail at kundenservice@vireo.de.
In case they neither ship it, send me a PM then we can check if I you want to order to my address and I ship it to you with DHL.
I will be flying to Denver on September 17th, so I can order the module to my address in Ulm and mail it to a US address from Denver if you want. Please contact me via PM if you are interested.
I’m also willing to bring other parts for US fairphoners if you can let me know within a few days. Preferably, no entire phones and no batteries, and only parts that are on stock in the store or that someone can bring/mail to me in Ulm before I leave.
Thanks for all ideas and offers for help! I was able to order from vireo de and they have confirmed my order! Hopefully it will not take too long. I was considering getting the blue filter glass but I have many questions now so I ended up just getting 2x USB C component and the protective cover in green to match my phone.
Tonight I just did some quick digging into the pcb and found a way to securely attach some silicon high strand wire for a temporary charging adapter. I do NOT suggest anyone try this as it was very possible this could have resulted in the magic blue smoke getting out of my phone turning it into a brick. I had hoped to find some schematics or something but with some probing I was 99% sure I had the correct pads and polarity. I am still wondering if I can shove a wireless charging receiver inside. 
Hi everyone,
I wish I’d gone searching for info on whether the FP4 would work in the USA earlier! I had assumed from doing a frequency support check that the FP4 would work fine on T-Mobile.
We have two FP4s in the family, one just recently set up for use and the other has been in use for a month here. Both on Mint Mobile and neither support VoLTE or Wifi Calling. We asked Mint and they said the phone doesn’t support Wifi Calling (which of course it does, and we confirmed by checking with our UK SIMs which we had Wifi Calling working on, and it still works). We have now messaged Fairphone support but aren’t hopeful that this will resolve anything as the problem seems to be at the T-Mobile end.
I can only think that changing the IMEI to make the phone look like one which is supported, but of course that’s legally a very dark grey area!
I can confirm that toggling aeroplane mode off/on does create a better data/SMS connection for a period of time, but doesn’t help on the calling side.
Fingers crossed for a fix, but in the meantime we’ll have to fallback to our backup phones which do have VoLTE and Wifi Calling enabled here.
Cheers 
I moved your post to this existing topic please also read above. I’m not sure that you can call it odd, as a FP is not a Pixel phone and the FP is not supported officially in the US…
I moved your post as the above covers (all) experience of other US Fairphoners who will be notified about posts this topic, so I think you would find here a way faster answer if anyone would have one. Overall as the US community is quite small, so far we try to keep all information here in this topic.
My point was, that you cannot compare a Pixel Phone with a Faiprhone reg. reception, as the Pixel phone is supported in the US, which the Fairphone is not. You use Ting, still Ting uses T-Mobile as far as I understand, so above is a lot infomration in my eyes about the T-Mobile network and different regions especially reffering to shut down of 3G network, no VoLTE, bad call quality etc. pp. What are your settings, have you 5G enabled, if yes, disable it. Did you contact Ting to see if they can do anything at their end?
Even in supported countries the call quality is not always good depending on the provider
I posted my issue on Reddit, which I would suggest other folks do as well to avoid such aggressive moderation tactics here.
At any rate, with the help of a couple of awesome Redditors (who also use FP4s in USA), I was able to solve my issue. If anyone else has a similar problem, please feel free to DM me.
Please post what you found here. Have you been able to get VoLTE working?
Havent read it in detail, but would say this was all discussed here as well? Like frequency Bands, area, moving inbetween towers and restarting?
Well the comments on reddit are being deleted now for some reason, which is not very helpful 
Yes, it is now supported in the USA: https://fccid.io/2AUWUFP4
I’ve not seen this posted for discussion anywhere else, so perhaps it happened without anyone noticing? Anyway, now there can’t really be any excuses from T-Mobile and it’s MVNOs and I hope they and Fairphone can get things enabled soon.
Cheers
Oh that would be great! I recently started poking Mint mobile about it, but they were unfortunately still not too helpful even if the FP4 shows as fully compatible on their website.
I also contacted T-Mobile again, and they now stated that the FP4 is fully supported while they earlier said it was not.
So my Mint plan still runs for 2 months. A month from now I might poke them again and also talk with T-Mobile to see if I can get a SIM tested in my FP4.
Having registered an FCC ID doesn’t make Fairphone support anything in the US as of now.
The Fairphone 3 got one, too, in early 2020 … https://fccid.io/2AUWUFAIRPHONE3
It’s up to T-Mobile then.