Hi guys,
as my current FP2 is getting slower and slower I am planning to replace it with a FP4. Now I realised that my provider switched the 5G network from NSA (non stand alone) to SA (stand alone) and I am wondering if the FP4 would work here.
The FP support tells me: ask your provider, but as this seems to be a software / update issue I couldn’t get an answer from the provider. The search on the internet didn’t get usefull resulst, too…
Is anyone here who has any useful hints? It would be a pitty to buy such an expensive device that cannot be used as it is designed for…
Thanks in advance, have a good time and stay healthy,
Knut
It’s just the other way round, the provider can use the already installed hardware, but the user needs to have a compatible phone. The first available smartphone was the OPPO Find X3 Pro.
Hi,
thanks for the swift replies and the usefull link. I already found similar information, but at the end of the day it does not answer the question: does the FP4 support the 5G SA or not? Or did I miss something?
Any ideas?
thanks and best regards
Knut
It ain‘t advertised, so we can‘t know. But as only four phones support 5G SA at the moment (Oppo and some Samsung S21 versions) I personally don’t believe that the FP4 is number five.
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as mentioned, I asked the support already before asking here in the community. The two answers I got were copy/paste from the FAQ (which I studied before asking) and did not answer the question.
The only hint was to ask my ISP…so if the support does not know what the product can do or not, who else?
becoming disappointed. Either go for a FP3 or search for an altenative supplier.
Thanks fpr your help,
regards
Knut
The advantage is a saving of app. 140 Euro. There is no need to spend money for a feature that is useless for me. Switch to another ISP is not an option as the current one is the only where I have a connection at my workplace.
Second advantage: the FP3 is smaller, what I definitively prefer.
Finally…after some more mails there was the clear statement from the support team that the FP4 is not able to support 5G SA (Stand-Alone) as the chipset is not able to work with SA.
Now waiting for the update to Android 10 for my FP2 and then let see if it works better as in the moment, If not I will replace it with a FP3+
I agree. As things stand in the 5G world, it doesn’t seem reasonable, to me, to advertise a phone as 5G compatible if it can’t handle Standalone (i.e. “full” 5G without using 4G LTE for control functions). While initial deployments may be using NSA techniques to hurry it out and be able to say, “we do 5G”, I’ve seen reports that they “are only slightly better than new 4G systems, estimated at 15 to 50% better”, so I’d imagine they’ll all be wanting to move to full SA as soon as they can.
I suppose we can rely on Qualcomm knowing what they’re talking about.
Hi all, don’t know if my experience is valid as a field test, but I was struggling with Vodafone’s Speedtest and made some tests at different locations and got different displayed network technologies in the app than on the upper right network mode on the phone.
Additionally the measured speeds where not as expected. So after some research about different deployment methods of the different providers and your thread here, I believe FP4 has SA not (yet) implemented.
What can you see in the attached screenshot:
on 21.1 I had very high throughput rates, but it shows 4G network, hence it is the latest and greatest 4G. Even if the upper right network mode showed 5G…
in the tests before 21.1. there where much lower throughout tested, also when with native 5G, which is then 5G NSA…
What would you read from the tests?
Hi Wolfi_RR, welcome to the forum and thanks for taking the trouble to do some readings
According to the wikipedia page I cited above, which quoted
["Vodafone launches 5G SA in 170 German cities and municipalities"](https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2021/04/13/vodafone-launches-5g-sa-in-170-german-cities-and-municipalities/). TeleGeography. 2021-04-13. Retrieved 2021-04-13.
Vodaphone started launching SA last April, so presumably they've made progress since then. But there's no sure way of knowing what technologies were available to you on the 21.1.2022 I suppose without asking them or getting detailed info for the cell you were in.
However, 300 Mbps is a very respectful rate for a mobile phone, to my mind, however you look at it. Although strangely asymmetrical.
Not surprised. I also think there are likely to be some “approximations” in the technology indicated by the status bar icons. As you’ll have seen, there are various flavours of 4G / 5G implementation too subtle to be portrayed by a few icons …
So I agree I don’t see any evidence from these results of successfully connecting to 5G SA, but I don’t see anything that incontrovertibly demonstrates that FP4 is not SA-capable. I expect more info will roll in over the coming months, and many thanks for being the first to start us off!
At the very bottom of any Qualcomm spec sheet, it says something about some optional features being available to OEMs upon request and licensing. What they mean with that in is that the OEM (Fairphone) gets to choose things like supported 3/4/5G bands, WiFi standards etc. The higher the capabilities that Fairphone picks, they more they get to pay for the SoC. The truth could well be that the SoC hardware supports 5G SA, but it’s disabled because Fairphone didn’t pay what Qualcomm asked for it. Now I don’t know what the negotiations looked like, but I would find it a very short-sighted decision to not include 5G SA support as this means that as providers upgrade to a 5G SA infrastructure (and replace the NSA infra, which from what I’m reading is not a given!), service might regress.
