I got a freind to post a 3+ to Australia but now they’re finally shutting down the 3G networks really soon so the phone won’t be usable in this country. The credit is kind of meaningless to me, and I have a couple of cases that fit it that will also be useless without the phone. But I see that EU is also shutting down 3G where it still exists so I’m not sure the phone has value in EU either.
So while I’d rather give the phone+cases to someone who can actually use it, that means chasing up friends from India and Bangladesh to see if they can send it that way. They might not want the bother.
Can I post it to Fairphone and have them reuse/recycle it, if I pay for postage? Or should I just dump it in the ewaste stream in Australia and hope for the best?
There were people in this forum buying FP3+ for parts or as a set I believe for something like 200 euros. If you have a working set, it seems a waste to throw it away. Don’t know the shipping/customs cost from Australia, but I would be surprised if it wasn’t worth it to check.
Thanks, I’d completely forgotten the market forum. When I get a new phone organised I’ll post the 3+ there and see what interest I get.
Pretty sure second hand stuff rarely gets taxes applied and it’s $AU25 to post it to Europe from here (15 Euro) so if someone is willing to pay even 100 Euro for it that would be worth while.
Just to avoid misunderstanding: the FP3 is able to use VoLTE so just because 3G is shut down it does not mean the FP3 is unusable. That might be true for you in Australia, as you use it in an unsupported country with carrier that will most likely not partner with FP to set this up properly.
The carrier claims to have already enabled VoLTE, and sent warning SMS and email based on how my phone connects. On the network page in phone settings I have mobile data enabled, 4g calling enabled, prefferred network 4G etc. The status bar shows a 4G icon when I have mobile data enabled). I’m not sure what mroe I can do on my phone to suggest is use VoLTE.
This is something that has widespread public alarm in Australia and the shutdown was delayed a year as a result, so I’m fairly confident that the carrier is correct.
It’s possible that if I changed to a different network provider (Australia has three networks and many, many resellers) that would work, at least in the major cities. But the reason I chose the carrier I did is to get coverage in rural areas. Sadly they’re also the carrier most people who are having VoLTE issues are using (ie, the other two carriers have fewer people reporting issues. Which suggests that newer Fairphones might have the same issue, so I may have to wait until after the 3G shutdown to be sure other FP users are correctly reporting whether their phones work.
I’m using the band information from GSMArena and Telstras “bands and frequencies” from this web page: Our Coverage & Rollout Maps - Telstra which is why I thought it would work. Telstra use bands 3,7,28 and 3+ uses 3,7 (plus many others).