Today I read (in Dutch) that T-Mobile is testing out 4G (LTE) on band 38. Coincidently, I just learned that my UK provider “3” started using band 1 (2100MHz) for increasing coverage in London. Unfortunately, the Fairphone website only lists support for bands 3 (1800 MHz), 7 (2600 MHz) and 20 (800 MHz).
Now normally I would assume that Fairphone does not advertise support for these bands due to hardware limitations. However, there is a topic on the XDA forums on how these bands can be unlocked for the OnePlus One, a phone with the same Snapdragon 801 SoC as used by the Fairphone. This makes me wonder…
Long story short - and I’m not sure whether this would count as a feature request or a challenge - is it possible to unlock these bands on the Fairphone 2? Is there a chance that Fairphone might release an update that incorporates the necessary change to unlock these bands 1 and 38 on our phones without the need for me to root it, by which it could extend the usability and lifespan? Or are there practical problems with this?
It could be that the Fairphone 2 needs to be CE certified to operate on those bands before they can be officially unlocked. What XDA does is hacking a phone to support frequencies for which it may not have been approved by the authorities.
If this ends up being a problem of certification, I’d be happy to learn ways of incentivising Fairphone to go through the process. 
Battery life could improve if the smartphone picks up on a network at one of these bands rather than constantly searches for coverage on other bands, reliability would improve as its wider capabilities gives carriers more tools to better distribute phones over bands, and as carriers are bound to switch to 5G in the future, the more versatile this phone can be on the 4G networks the longer it is likely to remain working in the future. All good reasons why I believe support for these bands could increase the value and longevity of my FP2.
On a more technical note though: would the antenna be suitable for operating at these frequencies?
Probably it’s just manpower & money… 
As far as I remember limitations in these two factors were one important reason to distribute and support the FP2 not outside Europe, because an additionak certification e.g. in the US would have been overly time consuming and expensive.
I guess one additional issue is the support by Qualcom for the SoC. They would have to enhance the modem firmware for the Snapdragon 801, which is something they probably won’t want to do for an old chipset.
Figured in the end it’s better to attract dev attention for this, so I created an “enhancement” request on the bugtracker. Curious to hear what the devs can tell me about this!
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