I do not have this phone but was thinking of buying it. I live in the US and I’m on Verizon. Verizon recently " “upgraded” " the local tower to 5G and now I barely have signal in the house. It’s using the same band as the 4G, and looks like it isn’t truly 5G. The band is 13.
I am thinking of switching to Tmobile, but the signal inside the home is about the same, but at the window I get 2x the speed. I live in a rural area, so I’m assuming this is going to be 5G band 71.
I have 2 questions about the cellular capabilities.
Can someone point me in the right direction to unlocking LTE/5G bands with either root or QPST?
The chipset supports 5G N260 and N261, so why does this phone not support mmwave? What is the purpose of the european only market? Did it really just come down to Fairphone did not want to put the antenna in the phone, or is it there but mmwave isn’t activated? Or are the technical specs wrong?
I emailed support about the following question about a week ago and still have not heard back, which is making me reconsider this purchase. But nonetheless, the phone is advertised as supporting WiFi 6E 6GHz. Does it now or is it planned to support a mobile hotspot on that frequency?
They finally emailed me back and it became immediately obvious the customer service rep had no idea what I was asking. This is the email I sent
Has 6GHz hotspot been implemented in software yet, and if not, are there plans to do this? I know the hardware is capable. I am considering purchasing this phone and would like to be able to use a 6GHz hotspot for short distance tethering. Also, is the software capable of connecting to 6GHz networks?
This is the email they sent back
Dear knuxyl,
My name is Harm from the support team - nice to e-meet you! Thank you for supporting us and reaching out.
I apologize for our late reply. I understand that waiting for so long to get a reply is not a good experience. We are experiencing a significant increase in the number of support requests. Please be sure we're doing our best to catch up! We are grateful for your patience.
Fairphone 5 does not support 6G and we're currently not working on implementing this.
The Fairphone 4 & 5 are optimised for European cellular networks and support Standard 5G technology. This is also called Sub-6GHz or Everyday 5G.
This means that Fairphone can use an increased number of bands to transfer data to the network. It improves speed and latency when compared to 4G/LTE.
Fairphone 4/5 does not support mmWave technology, and unfortunately, we will be unable to support it with a future update.
You can find more information in our support article on 5G technology.
5G SIM
Your Fairphone 5G is Dual SIM: it can support two different SIM cards. One physical nano SIM and a virtual eSIM.
While both SIM slots support 5G, it can only be enabled on one at a time. By default, the nano SIM slot is set as the preferred 5G slot, but you can easily change this in the Settings. Find out how to set it up:
Set up your SIM card on your Fairphone
Set up your eSIM card on your Fairphone
For more details on Fairphone 5G network capabilities, you can also check our support article on network coverage of the Fairphone.
If you have any further questions, you’re welcome to reach out to me again, and I will be happy to help.
Have a lovely day!
Best regards,
Met vriendelijke groet - Best regards,
Harm (he/him)
So the representative ignored the hotspot tethering question, and assumed I was inquiring about a non existent 6G cellular network.
Late reply, rep that has no basic understanding of information technology, and rep used a copy/paste form to reply. I am no longer interested in fairphone so I’ll be moving on.
I just received another reply with an “apology”. This is insulting. Rep assumed I hadn’t even read the technical specifications, and thought a link to it would answer my question, 22 days after I responded. If I wasn’t sure before to not do business with this company, it’s set in concrete now.
Dear knuxyl,
I hope you're doing well. I misunderstood your question indeed, I'm very sorry about that! I also saw your forum post, so there's no real need to get into this anymore. I could have always reached out to a more tech savvy person, but alas.
In fact Fairphone 5 does support Wi-Fi 6E, you can find more information about the [technical specifications on our website as well](https://shop.fairphone.com/fairphone-5#section5).
Wishing you all the best.