Fair phone 4 works perfectly with Telstra. Also supports 5G. Currently Telstra are trialing 5G on all prepaid services.
Think they will cap it back to 250Mbps after the trial
These guys sent me the phone very quickly and the price is also good.
Canāt buy directly from Fairphone as we are not in a supported country.
However all the parts are very affordable and the build quality is excellent.
Can the Fairphone 4 run Australian banking apps such as Commbank?
Hi Mate,
Yes it certainly can. I run NetBank, ING, St George no problems. They have the official Google app store so everything works the same as Samsung etc, just no bloatware. Tap and pay also works fine.
Phill
For those looking for MMS issues I seem to be your greatest source of information at this time, so prepare for a wall of text and go near to the bottom (line 48 of 105, lol), also note, Iām not proof reading this again, itās too long so excuse the likely many mistakes
Figured Iād make an account and post cause of the hell Iāve just been through with the FairPhone 4 or more accurately Amaysim (Optus).
To answer the questions on the topic.
-
Why were you interested in FP
Custom ROM support (specifically CalyX OS), Repairability, SD Card support and the ability to remove the front facing camera. -
What made you switch
My last phone (pixel 5 (number 2, first one manufacturing issues) < device from hell) died (battery, random shutdowns, power buttons stopped working) -
Whereād you get it from
Bought it from Clover, great store if you want to import the phone to Aus -
Do people you know show interest in FF4
Nope, they want the latest and breakiest -
Your city and provider
Adelaide, Amaysim (Optus re-packager) currently -
Issues youāve encountered
99% of the phone is perfect,
Issue 1: Only real complaint would be that the default camera app works amazingly well but isnāt available for download from f-droid to my knowledge for use on CalyX OS as is my preference
Issue 2: Iāll direct you to the bottom of my post after 8
- Pros and Cons of FP
Pros
- Custom ROM support
- Easy to repair (battery replacements and extreme ease of individual part replacement by myself instead of a repair shop)
- Can modify it as I like
- SD Card
- Great CPU/GPU choice will last for the ages
Cons - Screen is somewhat too large at 6.3", my preference starts and ends at 6"
- (a half issue for me now but) Whereās the bloody headphone jack and the spiel about it being more sustainable by removing it is crap, I have tons of perfectly good AUX gear, what do I throw it, Iām not buying crappy converters that break after 15 minutes of use, I have 4 broken ones now, Iām done
- Tips if Fairphone branched into Australia
- Setup direct shipping to Australia (and add into the Australian price the import tax on the webpage so people can see the price jump for 1000+)
- Cooperate with our hostage takersā¦ oh I mean mobile providers, get text, calls and MMS working on all of these guys consistently and your basically set for the Australian market, maybe youāll need to change out the mobile communications SOC for complete 5g coverage, I believe your missing one band but beyond that youāve got a great product that Iām my opinion will with proper support grow very big at an ever increasing pace so long as other manufacturers donāt stand in the way
- Other than that a word of warning, take caution to contracting your phone sales through specific stores/corps, sell it yourself off your website as #1 and anyone else can buy and re-sell as they please, itās the better way to do it for independence sake
And so to the MMS issues and issue 2 with the Fair Phone 4
My Details:
Provider: Amaysim (Optus Reseller)
Sim Type: Physical
Phone: Fairphone 4 (purchased through Clove Mid January 2023)
Issue: I canāt send or receive MMS (images, long text, audio), mobile data and normal texts work fine
What have I done:
- Reset the phone
- Installed messenger QKSMS to try alternative to (google text and later AOSP default messenger app)
- Installed custom ROM CalyX OS
- Verified APN detail validity
- Deleted existing APN details and re-entered them manually
- Tried changing my preferred band
- Mobile Data On/Off, Wifi On/Off on both of those
- Played with permissions
- Reset the phone 4 times twice each OS
- Changed compression size for images, everything from (auto, 2000kb all the way to 100kb) changing many other settings all the way along
- Broke and pushed around MMS APN configurations to check if something was wrong my end or perhaps there was a working alternate configuration
- Testing the SIM on two other phones (both work)
- And literally hundreds of other little different things all over the period of 4 days
What have I done with my provider:
- Went through APN settings
- Did restarts and the most basic of basic website instruction page based troubleshooting spanning 4 hours of time wasting insanity
- Replaced my SIM with a $2 replacement SIM and transferred my details to it
- Used another person I knows Amaysim sim
- Got them to re-enable MMS functionality and refresh their configuration database for my phone
- Also had them run troubleshooters which wipe my account fresh to view only the information relevant to this moment
The grand results:
- A grand old nothing
- Sprinkled with Telstra fueled rage when discovering Calls, Text & MMS work with no issue when using a Telstra SIM from another person I know, It worked immediately
Current Solution:
- Use Telstra
Why the issues:
Entirely speculation but based upon my lack of understanding of how mobile communication systems are set up in the modern era, assuming itās setup using the internet and some front facing APIs, I assume Optus likely is blocking MMS access from devices specific devices or more likely having setup a Whitelist of allowed devices. ( would probably be helpful avoiding botting and other unauthorized use cases of their network )
Considering how the failures occur
Receiving ( I see the MMS message come in, attempts to download result in an endless wait cycle for download )
Sending (Attempts to send result in an endless sending cycle (itās literally end less) )
I assume thereās no blocking setup Call and Text message side but instead where concerning the MMS APIs perhaps there only blocking/filtering for a route responsible for MMS data downloads/uploads but not for MMS availability checking (ie ping that route to see if the route details are correct) & event forwarding (being that I receive notification of incoming MMS).
Changing APN details for MMS sees failures occur immediately meaning that the MMS APIs are accessible and I assume providing the expected results so thereād likely be no incompatibility MMS protocol wise considering the success other people have had within Australian networks.
And so if youāre having issues with the Fairphone 4.
Specifically MMS issues and your in Australia, youāre probably with Optus or a reseller and youād best go strangle your provider for causing you grief as Iāll hopefully be doing tomorrow.
If itās an honest mistake then my fury can be satiated but until then I have plans to move to Woolworths mobile plans as they have a ever attractive $25 22GB Telstra based plan or otherwise someone cheaper.
Iād rather loose out on some benefits for being with them for I think something like 7 years at this point, so long that Iāve progressively sanded my SIM down from full size to Micro over the years and only just replaced it yesterday in response to my issues.
So basically save yourself days of time and switch operators to a telstra reseller, Iāll come back again if I sort out my issues with Amaysim / Optus or end up having issues with Woolworths.
Will MMS be alive moving forward in Australia? My understanding is this method of communication has been retired a few days ago or will retire soon in Germany depending on the provider used.
BTW welcome to the community.
Iāve not heard anything about MMS being retired here, Iād assume itās here to stay for the time being although I canāt say Iād have a problem if our telcos decide to move to a newer API/Standard considering the split that exist are mostly there because of legacy support thatās long been dropped in place of a fully digital system
To provide an update on Fairphone 4 MMS issues with Amaysim/Optus.
I spent over a week screwing around, got to L2 amaysim support and optus support as well through their engineers and it was a royal waste of time, these people dindnāt want to do anything and just kept asking me to do the same thing every couple of days, ie send an mms and tell us when you sent it etc.
And so whatās happening in this case
From what Iāve managed to gather from the support guys, my phone fully supports their network and communicates properly with their systems but when attempting to send data through to MMS they have some form of internal server error when handling the data and it ignores my request.
Gee sounds an awful lot like how failures occur when providers are filtering phones out by IMEI for manufacturer/model.
And so the fixes:
- Change IMEI number, I was considering this but in Australia the laws arenāt clear in the slightest anymore relating to IMEI modifications. (if someone knows for certain if this is legal here do let me know as Iād like to do as much)
Iāll also note that I donāt have an IMEI indicating manufacture by Fairphone themselves, It looks like the reseller changed the code increasing it by a few digits so I imagine changing this to the default may have helped or otherwise just changing the IMEI to my last phone would more than likely fix my issue. - Alternatively changing to Telstra would fix my issues and being that Woolworths mobile is cheaper Iāve decided to go to them.
And so now having changed over I can say on Woolworths mobile the MMS issues are still not fixed, now at this point I havenāt contacted their support and so I donāt know whether itās just as simple as activating MMS or if this is something more however in the coming weeks Iāll be having a chat with them and if itās something more Iāll come back to edit this post if possible indicating as much. In that case just go with Telstra.
Iāll also note one change Iāve noticed between Amaysim and Woolies Mobile and that change is that call quality is significantly better, this was one complaint I got here and there and thought nothing of it but having changed over it seems better than my last phone even so perhaps there was more than just MMS issues on Amaysim.
Mind you as well I tried playing with wifi calling and all that while on amaysim with no improvement, I assume they disabled that functionality or otherwise disabled 4g calling which is what Iām using on woolies mobile (not even wifi calling) and Iāve seen a significant improvement.
Gday,
Iām reaching out to see if there are any other fp3 users around the sunshine Coast or brisbane, who might be willing to help me!
I have the following problem :
Thanks in advance
Iām using a new FairPhone 4 in Brisbane on the Aldi networkā¦ canāt send MMS images or audio. Has there been any progress with this? From the look of this post (from āconsequencesā) the only solution as of last year is to change provider to Telstra, which I donāt want to do. Aldi insisted I test the sim card in another phone, which I did and it sends MMS fine. So theyāll tell me the problem is with the handset. Iāve reconfigured the APN settings according to Aldiās website recommended settings and nothing changed.
Hi Simon,
Due to my work, Iāve been unable to go any further with testing this issue and am simply not using MMS at the moment.
As far as it goes, MMS will likely not work on any Optus operator however seems to work on Telstra, whether thatās limited to just Telstra or maybe some Telstra re-branders allow it Iāve not a clue.
If you were going to spend time talking with your operator I would ask in relation to international modem support for their network being that the included modem is exactly that, this being my next train of though in relation to troubleshooting as the issue donāt actually lay with the phone per-say as by what Iāve been told by my past operator.
My next steps
-
I was planning to talk to my operator (woolworths) sometime next year, when I get the chance and ask about support relating to International modems as this phone has, maybe the functionality is disabled on their end for international modems just in case?
-
Beyond that, I was planning to purchase a number of sims (post-paid, lowest cost options) from different operators to check whether they function or not. Once again not getting around to that anytime soon.
Also a quick side note which may be helpful if anyone hears complaints about call quality.
- Turn off 4G Calling, Iām on a custom ROM so not sure if thatās relevant to all or not but in my case when talking to people not connected to the same tower, this reduced my audio output quality significantly
- Also, the against ear call mode uses the microphone at the bottom of the phone and itās easy to cover / rub over, had my fair share of complaints until I realized as much.
Thanks for a speedy reply, consequences. I sent a support request ticket into FPā¦ if they reply with anything helpful, Iāll get back to you (I doubt it - sounds like youāve done a lot of research). I wontā bother contacting Aldi Support. Iām sure theyāll insist itās the handset. Your idea of trying different providersā sims is probably the better way to go if indeed itās something to do with their modem settingsā¦ thatās too technical for me. I guess Iāll learn to live with workarounds (apps on wifi)ā¦ When I visit Poland next week, Iāll probably buy a sim there and then Iāll know if MMS works there. Cheers.
I had exactly this issue with MMS on Fairphone with amaysim (optus). Couldnāt send or receive.
No idea why, but this suddenly started working a couple of months ago. There was a new icon in the status bar that I couldnāt work out what it was for or get rid of it, but mms started working after that.
Got a new problem today for a separate thread. My plan has been upgraded to 5g, but this is causing my phone to randomly restart. Dropping back to 4g resolves the issue. Another mystery
The 5g reboot thing happens in Europe as well for some. So I think the only who can solve this im Australia is the provider as I guess FP support will not help, as long as the phone is used in a not supported country.
Thanks for posting this,
Iāve now borrowed an Amaysim sim from another phone and can confirm MMS worked immediately for me but not switching back to the Woolworths sim.
Looks like Amaysim has either allowed the phone to use their service or otherwise support has come about with the implementation of 5g support?
The plan in question was a $30 dollar plan which includes 5g.
As such Iām in the process of switching back to Amaysim, Iāll be moving onto a cheaper non 5g plan as per I barely use data and such a thing would provide additional context for others, Iāll report back on whether the functionality persists on that plan or not once Iām switched back over.
The MMS fix happened for me before 5g implementation, so I donāt think theyāre related.
Not sure what the issue is with random reboots when connected to 5g. Setting the phone to use a maximum of 4g resolves the issue. Oddly, I was near Terrigal in NSW and could get 5g, but Croydon in Sydney I canāt access it.
Good to know, Not sure on 5g reboots myself, being that other phones seem to have a similar issue independent of SOC, Iād best assume thatās software / protocol related over it being a hardware issue so perhaps thatāll be patched with future kernal releases.
Maybe if yourself or others are interested in playing around (though do take caution to record your initial config and restore that if changes do not work).
Accessing the below gives access to extra network related settings, potentially changing around country preference in Radio Band or otherwise could have an affect on 5g operation.
Aus has two different bands, maybe itās an issue related to only one of the band groupings
(Could also result from the missing band support for Australia 5g for this SOC (https://www.kimovil.com/en/frequency-checker/AU/fairphone-4)).
Donāt believe thereās any other way to realistically play with a qualcomm SOC without root and at that point itās just best to leave it.
Phone > Number Entry > ##4636## > Phone Information
Amaysim 5g has been stable for me for the last couple of days. I had contacted amaysim support about this. They said they changed something about my account. If I find out what that was Iāll report back.