FACING 4G It's a long weekend, this year for a king's non-birthday rather than a queen's, so I'm staying off the roads as usual and pottering about with my projects or reading too much stuff on the internet. So far mainly the latter, and in fact I got a head start yesterday because I realised that 3G mobile phone coverage with the largest network, Telstra's, only has twelve months left before it's turned off. I got onto this early with my internet a year and a half ago, as documented in bits of these posts: gopher://aussies.space/0/%7efreet/phlog/2021-12-29Upgrades_and_Downgrades.txt gopher://aussies.space/0/%7efreet/phlog/2022-02-27Getting_Nowhere_Faster.txt Although mainly because I mis-remembered the turn-off date and started early, it seems that was wise because the burst of reliable 4G signal didn't last and this year I've only been getting 4G reception on a day or two every few weeks. No idea why it comes and goes so much, although I have heard that the tower's antennas can be directed to provide more signal in directions where there's more demand, which could well mean away from me. I'm pretty sure I'll have to build an antenna after all, and actually I'm thinking of going all-out and using a big old satellite dish as the basis for it, which is an approach that has been documented a bit on the Whirlpool forums. But also now I'm thinking about the replacement for my actual mobile phone, which I keep turned off in the car, because I never really got into the game of mobile telephony. I pulled apart the spare for my current Samsung A411 and wrote about it in this post (and I did get it back together again too): gopher://aussies.space/0/%7efreet/phlog/2022-07-06Jirka_Made_Me_Pull_my_Phone_Apart.txt Being a 2008 model it of course doesn't know anything about 4G, and in fact even that wouldn't be enough because there's yet another layer of confusion now with phones that do 4G but not VoLTE which is what I actually need for a phone that I just want to make calls with after 3G is turned off. So yesterday I set to researching what options are out there at minimum cost. The rest of this post is partly just a summary for myself actually. WHAT NOT TO BUY Sellers on the web that are overseas or likely to be importing things without much deep consideration are likely to offer things that don't work properly in Australia. Mainly they just list America and Europe as the two different universes, neither of which imply any compatibility with Australian phone networks. The most important thing is the frequencies - if a phone supports 3G and 4G, but not any/many of the 4G frequencies used in Aus, then it's no better than a 3G-only phone. For my purposes I'm mainly looking at Telstra's frequencies because for taking it in the car I need to have the best coverage I can get. 700MHz and 1800MHz seem to be the key ones, with 700MHz probably the one I'll want most since it should go furthest (hmm, this seems to have been a late addition with earlier devices using 1800MHz, so that might be what's up with my mobile broadband modem). https://whirlpool.net.au/wiki/mobile_phone_frequencies As noted, make sure phones aren't just 4G/LTE, but VoLTE. Annoyingly manufacturers seem not to be putting VoLTE on their specifications lists. Nokia puts it on the boxes for phones but not on their website. Argh! Avoid smartphones. I want a keypad and ideally a 'dumb' OS that I can ignore like on my 15yo Samsung. Some 'feature phones' do run Android, but a few manufacturers (Nokia, ZTE) still maintain their own dumbphone OSs. Don't look for stuff that's on manufacturer's overseas websites accidentally, there seem to be tons of models that are never made for Australia. WHAT I WANT TO BUY Something with really good reception, unfortunately manufacturers don't seem to publicise this even though I'm pretty sure it still varies between models. The only metric is Telstra's "Blue Tick" for rural handheld coverage, which is applied to some of the models they sell based on claimed testing and was a feature of my current Samsung. None of the consumer models seem to have pointy-out antennas like that anymore though. A second-hand phone that's had little or no use would be good, or an model that's heavily discounted by the retailers. WHAT CAN I BUY -Samsung- I can't get one I want from Samsung again, they seem to have dropped 'feature phones'. -Telstra- Telstra do still sell 'feature phones' as rebranded ZTE (Chinese brand) phones, although for some reason their website doesn't want to show them to me in their products lists. Brand names are "EasyCall" (for elderly people, expensive), "Lite" (cheap), "flip" (flip-phone, like my old one, expensive). Telstra phone versions with 4G VoLTE: * Lite 2 & 3 https://ztemobiles.com.au/telstra-lite-2/ https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/prepaid-mobiles/lite-3 The Lite 3 is actually made by Alcatel (TCL), not ZTE (Alcatel 3080T). Optus also sell this as their "X Lite 4G". * Flip 3 & 4 https://ztemobiles.com.au/telstra-flip-3/ https://ztemobiles.com.au/telstra-flip-4/ * EasyCall 5 (not sure about 4, not 3 or before) https://www.telstra.com.au/mobile-phones/prepaid-mobiles/telstra-easycall-5 The Telstra Lite 2 had some bad consumer reviews describing a poor keyboard design and hopeless UI. I'm not sure that ZTE are up to the same standard as Samsung, and it's not like my Samsung one is perfect. But 12 months ago the Lite 2 was being sold off by many retailers for just $9, $50 off the regular price! If only I'd begun looking back then it would have been easily worth a shot for that price. Maybe keep an eye out for that happening again though (I know it happens sometimes with mobile broadband modems too, so it's not a one-off, they have to sell them before their bundled SIM cards expire). -Opel- These are sold by Australia Post and other opportunistic retailers. They're not that cheap and probably poor quality so I won't bother looking into them. -Nokia- Good old Nokia seem to be the last major brand still holding the torch for the 'feature phone'. Earlier this year they dumped a long list of their first 4G feature phone models running their S30+ OS and introduced a couple of new ones (105 4G and 110 4G). Unfortunately the old ones don't seem to be around on the second-hand market, and their re-use of old model numbers makes them hard to pick out - I even found one seller on Ebay advertising a 3G model as the later 4G model. Old models are found by looking at their website via the wayback machine, and they're listed here albeit with some models that weren't released in Australia (yet?): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Series_30%2B#Made_by_HMD I've set up Ebay search alerts for all of these because they look better than Telstra's ones, except for the question of reception in weak coverage areas. Litterally nobody is selling any of the Nokia 4G models for under $70 on Ebay at the moment though, so it looks like they might be hard to buy cheap. == Rugged phones / Push-to-Talk over Cellular (PoC) radios == These are designed for industrial environments, mainly for employers who want to provide them to staff. They're designed to be tough, or "rugged" seems to be the favoured term, and difficult for staff to waste time with by installing games and apps. They all seem to run Android unfortunately. PoC is a way of using the phone network for communications like a two-way radio, replacing conventional walkie-talkies without the issue of range. Telcos offer special services to businesses that these 'phones' work with, and it's basically like a continuous phone call where you push the button on the side to talk. Some seem to use apps which might go via the internet to a separate PTT (Push-To-Talk) service provider instead of the telco. Some of these don't have a keypad, but others do and they seem like they could be used as a regular phone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Push-to-talk#Mobile_phones These are expensive in Australia, but there are hints that they might have very good reception, mainly the fact that some have big antennas, but they don't seem to actually _say_ they they have better than normal reception, which is a pain. I'm mainly hoping that someone's going to buy up a bunch of them from a business that's upgrading and sell them cheaply on Ebay, but it doesn't seem to be happening yet. I've set Ebay search alerts for these but I'm not really very hopeful. -AGM- This mob mainly sell rugged smart phones, but they have an M series of feature phones. Their website doesn't talk about Australia, but there are some Australian distributors who hopefully know what they're selling. Much more expensive than the US prices on their website though. No mention of reception range. https://www.agmmobile.com/collections/m-series -Inrico- This mob make many models of those PoC radios, some with keypads like a feature phone but all aimed at 2-way radio type applications. Some do have big antennas though, so maybe good reception? But I can't find any reference to this on their website. You wouldn't want signal dropping out as people walk around large buildings though, so I can imagine that they would try to optimise reception. On the other hand they might just want to make them look like walkie-talkies, and indeed some actually have a conventional walkie talkie mode as well. It's less than clear whether these actually can work like normal phones, the walkie-talkie functionality requires a PTT app to be installed. There are a few other manufacturers, including cheap (compared to AU prices) ones on Aliexpress, but those are the only manufacturers who seem to have some (possibly deniable) presence in Australia. CONCLUSION For now I'm waiting to see whether a cheap deal pops up for one of the Nokias, or maybe one of the rugged phones. Failing that I'll probably go with one of Telstra's ZTE ones, especially if they get super-discounted again. Suggestions of other models available in Australia are welcome. freet@aussies.space - The Free Thinker