Yes, as long as 3G still exists, the MVNOs will provide the connection. All the major networks are winding down 3G, though, so by next year you’ll need a new VoLTE-capable (voice of 4G LTE) phone.
These days, SIM cards come on a “triple-cut” card that lets you punch out the size you need, including the large old-school size. Example: https://www.amazon.com/Prepaid-Red-Pocket-Mobile-Card/dp/B002C8KI7S
Edit: But, of course, confirm everything with them before you order the SIM.
i’m pretty convinced that in my part of the world i’ll be happy using 2G for at least a couple more years. they don’t change these things too often … maybe in the larger cities …
Yes, he does.
Thank so, so very very much for all the help. You’ve been very generous to help me get educated on all of this.
I spent 5 hours this morning wrestling with AT&T customer service (and getting shifted around to every department they have) and talking to Red Pocket. Thankfully I got some better AT&T reps this time who were able to explain the issue. Apparently, on Feb 19th, AT&T stop ACTIVATING 3G phones. If you had a 3G phone already activated on the line, then that phone can continue to be used until 3G signal goes out in your area. However, I tried to activate my new 3G phone right around that day, so I must’ve just missed this deadline no one knew about. 
Apparently Red Pocket MVNO is also no longer activating 3G phones but suggested they may be able to make an exception for my phone. So I went ahead and got my phone unlocked by AT&T (turns out you can DIY on their website!) and will test out Red Pocket as soon as I can figure out why their website is telling me all my payment methods are “authentication failed” (I swear its like something REALLY wants to stop me from making any progress).
If it turns out that I can’t get my 3G phone to work on their network, I’m looking into other phones now. If I can find a 4G slider without too much suspicious tracking stuff, I may go for that. I’d love if I can settle into proper privacy phone now since I’m going to be putting money towards this anyway.
What do ya’ll think of this: Sirin Finney phone
Does anyone know if Black Phone from Silent Circle will sell to an individual consumer? And if its features outside of a Black-Phone-to-Black-Phone setting are good enough to be worth using that way? I reached out to their customer support and no one got back to me.
Thank you again for sharing your insights!
I don’t recommend it. At $999, it is expensive, and it has never offered an upgrade for its SIRIN OS, which is based on Android 8.1, which was released in Dec. 2017. Standard Google practice is to stop offering security updates after 3 - 3.5 years. Google’s March security update indicates that it is still supporting Android 8.1, but that support will probably end in the next couple months if Google follows its standard practice.
When I go to the Sirin web site, I can’t find where to download SIRIN OS or instructions for how to install it on the phone. It appears that all the code that Sirin Labs added to Android 8.1 to make SIRIN OS is proprietary, and I expect Sirin Labs will never offer an upgrade, so you will have a totally unsupported phone by the end of this year. I doubt that Qualcomm with ever offer another firmware update for the Snapdragon 845 in the phone either.
Yes, you can buy the Silent Circle Blackphone 2 on Amazon for $839, but you should avoid it, because you need the North American variety and it is no longer being sold. The manufacturer is no longer producing phones and its web site says that it is no longer supporting the Blackphone 2. It was released in 2015, so it has an ancient version of Android that is no longer getting security updates.
In contrast, Purism is promising lifetime software updates, and that is credible, because its i.MX 8M Quad processor will be manufactured till Jan 2028, and all its drivers are free/open source, and Purism is working to get the phone supported by the mainline Linux kernel, so it will be able to upgrade to future kernel releases. See: https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#311-how-can-purism-provide-lifetime-software-updates-for-the-librem-5, https://source.puri.sm/Librem5/community-wiki/-/wikis/Frequently-Asked-Questions#81-how-does-the-librem-5-avoid-planned-obsolescence
PINE64 isn’t promising lifetime software updates, but you are effectively going to get them, and PINE64 is also trying to get the phone fully supported by the mainline Linux kernel. One disadvantage of the PinePhone compared to the Librem 5 is that a lot of its components are old and I doubt that Allwinner and Realtek will keep providing firmware upgrades for the A64 and the WiFi/BT for very long in the future, but PINE64 promises to manufacture the phone until 2024, so maybe it got promises from Allwinner, Realtek, Quectel and the rest of the component manufacturers that they will keep producing their parts for that long.
The pinephone (this is my experience) software isn’t ready yet. Once it enters deep sleep its pretty much dead to the world. There are text messages I never got because it was sleeping and were just lost to the ether (manjaro phosh, maybe mobian does better?). I think if you want a phone that’s reliable today, you’ll need to find an android variant that suits you.
According to the Pine64 February update, this problem should be solved soon. See the work by Dylan in the “PinePhone Part 2” section.
However, I agree with your point that the Librem 5 and PinePhone probably aren’t ready for general users yet. For somebody like @Rae, an AOSP derivative is probably what he should buy, which is why I suggested Rob Braxman, since he can install it for him.
This is very good to know. Thanks.
Hopefully Red Pocket can active your 3.5G slider and you can get by for a few months until you find a phone that syncs with your privacy needs. Before you throw lots of money at any new phone, make sure it has VoLTE-capability (AT&T calls it HD Voice) on the network you choose. Otherwise it will eventually be obsolete and incapable of phone calls. Let us know what you end up doing.
I think that it’s very closed and proprietary.
What does anyone think about this option to Rae’s dilemma of an interim phone to the L5? I’m basically in the same boat as Rae, wanting a fully-functioning interim device before the L5 will be fully-functioning, and before I can even acquire an L5 at this point.
If you go to eSolutions, click on “Buy an /e/ Smartphone!” and switch the country to USA, they are now offering the /e/ Galaxy S9 Refurbished for $380 and the /e/ Galaxy S9+ Refurbished for $430.
https://esolutions.shop/
I don’t really know anything about this Paris-based project, but it looks encouraging.
I am thinking of getting one of their phones when I am in Italy in May.
I’M SO JEALOUS!
Not to hijack the thread, but there is also this option: https://doc.e.foundation/easy-installer
I think that is a very good suggestion. I have one of his devices, both to play with and also to support him, while I wait for my L5 (which I expect late to receive in 2021).
Thank you for that opinion and explanation - that makes a lot of sense! I’d definitely rather spend the money with Purism. I’m just desperate to have something until then
I’d be happy to use the PinePhone in the meantime if I could get one soon, even if there are some lingering issues with it like what @Gavaudan pointed out until Pine64 fixes them. At this point I’m not going to be receiving any messages/calls pretty soon when AT&T shuts off my SIM again (no one could tell me when this would happen, the only estimate I received was “a couple days” but its now been 10 days) so it’d still be an improvement.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but anything Android or Google related makes my hair stand on end. I might resort to one with Rob Braxman’s services, but then there goes my money for the Librem 5.
I have tried to buy a single month of Red Pocket service + sim, for several days now, however, their website keeps telling me that my card authentication failed for two different cards (both of which are fully functional everywhere else), so I contacted their customer support yesterday and have not gotten a reply. I swear it is like something is TRYING to stop me…the amount of dead ends I’ve run into full force is well over the standard deviation from the mean.
When I talked to them earlier in the week they were “pretty confident” that my slider phone would activate ok on their network but I am not so sure. Thus, I’ve also been looking for 4g non-smartphone options. It appears that by the time 4g came out, the only phones being produced (for 4g) were smartphones and flip phones made for the elderly.
@BrentMpls Thanks for posting that link. I would also love to hear what others think about /e/ solutions. It looks great, however, I’m concerned about the specs where it says it is 4G LTE but then further down in the specs it says "VoLTE: Not yet supported by /e/OS on this phone". From what others have said in this thread, I think that means that when 3G is not available, you wont be able to make phone calls at all. It also doesn’t support VoWifi, so does that mean even Skype/etc calls are out? (double check the above if you plan to get one, @eNZymOrTHe ) …of course if they update the OS it in time, great. But I’m hesitant to be dependent on it.
This is what I’m seeing as my options until Librem 5 is ship-able (in no particular order):
Red Pocket + Slider: Figure out why Red Pocket wont take my money. Get the GSMA SIM, and make sure my slider phone can be activated on their network using a new phone number so I dont cancel my line with AT&T for no reason. If it works, then buy a new Red Pocket SIM to port my current number to.
4G Flip Phone + bluetooth keyboard: hope the phone can accept input from a bluetooth keyboard so I dont pull my hair out text messaging. Stay on AT&T because at this point, fuck everything, I just want this to be over. Cry if bluetooth keyboard doesn’t work.
Pine64 becomes ship-able before one of the other solutions works and I muddle through trying to install some kind of OS that I can operate.
Buy a phone from Rob Braxman, and then probably not get the Librem 5 unless my money tree starts growing actual money. Does the OS he installs work with VoLTE?
… Maybe that /e/ Solutions Galaxy s9 and pray they get VoLTE up and running before 3g connection gets too spotty in my area?
I finally got a response from their customer service- everything you said is correct. Apparently they DO offer Silent Phone, an app that costs like ~$127/year that encrypts (or otherwise secures? noob here) text messages between two app users, and secures your outgoing phone calls thru the app to any one even if theyre not using the app. That coverage is too limited for me, but figured I’d share that since some of ya’ll might want that as an addition to whatever you’ve already got going.
@BrentMpls This may be an option if money isn’t an issue:
Currently I’m doing this while waiting on the librem 5.
I have the oneplus phone, and I’ll note that I’m currently on a 7 day waiting period to get a code from them to unlock the bootloader (yeah, I wasn’t thrilled about this either).
I’ll be happy to share my experiences with either. Though I’m a complete newbie to smartphones so it’s not going to be advanced. I should be able to share some from lineageos next week, but a pinephone likely won’t come until late April.
Please share, I think it helps us. We will probably face similar issues with the L5.
Have you called your card issuer(s) to make sure they aren’t blocking the transaction because they think it’s unauthorized?
Have you tried a different browser? Perhaps restart your browser in “safe mode” and see if it works. (Look under the browser’s Help menu…and DON’T choose “Refresh,” choose “Restart.”) I know that sometimes my personalized browser privacy measures prevent things from working, especially if they require a stupid captcha.
If you’re using a VPN service, you might try turning if off, then see if the transaction completes.
Skype and VoWiFi are different things. Skype is a stand-alone application that provides calls over the data connection (all interior to the app). VoWiFi is a feature of the phone+carrier to route your phone’s cellular calls over the data connection.
@Rae. Yeah, nuts. I also spotted that after I had made that post. Absurd. Honestly, nobody should be selling any smartphone into the U.S. market at this point that is not VoLTE supported in the OS, at least without publicly declaring a definitive commitment to resolve the issue with a timeline that concludes before February 2022. (Hear that, Purism?). So, that is a deal-killer for me on that particular interim option for now.
Here is the /e/ bug report about VoLTE not working on the Galaxy S9. It sounds like a partial fix will be included in the next build, but the person who suggested the change only says that the operating system now shows VoLTE option being enabled, but he didn’t say “I tested VoLTE and it works”, so I’m not sure whether his fix works.
You can buy a used OnePlus and send it to Braxman to install LineageOS, but Braxman can probably recommend a cheaper VoLTE phone than the OnePlus. (By the way, the Moto G7 Play which is listed on his site doesn’t support VoLTE.)