Here is my review thread about what works and what doesn’t:
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Only if a carrier doesn’t use VoLTE.
I’s my understanding that all cell carriers in the U.S. now use VoLTE.
If this is correct, you won’t be able to make calls or text using cell connectivity until VoLTE is available for brax3 using UB Touch. I heard it might be a while.
Maybe @plamen has more updated info on this.
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It sounds like there is no SIM card I could get then. I’m using my first BraX3 that runs iodé as a hotspot for this UT BraX3 and that works to make it mobile but no phone calls except by VOIP.
Is UB Touch a form of Linux that will have minimal resource needs, or does it have heavy requirements for CPU and RAM e.g. does it use Plasma?
Also, is anyone auditing the Ubunu Touch code to ensure there’s no spyware? Canonical is a company whose former CEO and current board member Jane Silber formerly led General Dynamics C4 Systems, which is a part of the military industrial complex.
Ubuntu Touch was abandoned many years ago by Canonical and it’s an independent project. Its GUI is Unity, a form of Gnome, you can find many topics here by Lazarus who tests it lately. It connects to the Mediatek binary blobs through Halium. It has many disadvantages and difficulties and it rarely works with the SIM as a telephone.
That’s not encouraging, but I suppose this is the only way to be able to use the Mediatek blobs?
All Android phones that run Linux do it this way. For a fully open source Linux phone look into Pinephones and Librem.
I’ll try the Librem right after I win the lottery. As for the Pinephone, I’ve heard its reliability is not so good for many people who’ve bought it.
For Pinephone certainly little battery life, if you live in the USA you will probably have a problem with the EG25-G modem, in every other respect you have a mini desktop Linux system, no tricks with binary blobs running through Halium.
I think most of the Youtubers who have reviewed the Pinephone were in the USA and they reported various problems, such as buggy software and bricked hardware.
But what is it about the https://www.quectel.com/product/lte-eg25-g/ that would be problematic in the USA?
Update: I tried reaching out to Quectel about compatibility of the EG25g with the USA’s infrastructure and they have not replied.
I have extensively researched this modem and even in Europe I couldn’t activate LTE buy only up to 3G. Back then I hadn’t research the IMS and maybe that was the problem. In the USA there is an even more peculiar situation with the frequencies and the abolishment of GSM, 2G and 3G, so if you can’t get LTE you can’t even make a call, even Brax3 is missing frequencies for some carriers. The IMEI can be changed with an AT command but I never tried it and this is another problem in the USA where phones are blocked due to IMEI. Now with the enforcement of RCS messaging actually only Google authorised and Apple devices will be able to exchange SMS/MMS.