Are they wrong or are they right? I’ll buy my wife a new phone, one I find on my own, but she and I really don’t feel a pressing need for one unless it will stop being able to make calls or use data on January 1.
I am aware Huawei has a bad reputation, but…well, we are using them and have had no major issues or concerns. I am open to other brands in the future, but we’ll deal with that if she or I need a new phone.
It sounds like it’ll be ok–the phone supports LTE. I don’t think any cell company is discontinuing LTE support anytime soon, just 3G/HSPA.
Where did you get the phone? I’ve found in the past that cell providers don’t always understand much about phones that they don’t themselves provide, and may assume the worst about them (like, in this case, that it isn’t a 4G phone). They’re likely to send out notifications like this based on the IMEI number (which tells them the brand, model, etc.) and not the actual behavior of the phone on the network (i.e., if it ever connects via LTE). So if their info database is wrong, they might send out a bad notification.
Ok. Like I said, I suspect they simply don’t know what the phone is due to it not being in their make/model database. They don’t explicitly know that it supports 4G, so you get the notification.
This worked in my favor once. I ordered a phone from overseas back in the early days of smartphones. My provider charged extra for data on smartphones, even though data access was identical. Because they didn’t know my phone was a smartphone, I only had to pay for the cheap dumbphone data plan. They figured it out after a year or so, though.
Same old same old. Just planned obsolescence. I’m sure they do that on purpose.
Hey, I had a cell phone once that became obsolete. Why? It had a custom-designed battery and when it eventually wore out and couldn’t hold a charge any more, I found they didn’t make that kind of battery any more. Why do they even make batteries replaceable if they’re going to do that? Why not just hard-wire the battery into the guts of the unit.
My microwave oven has a 25-cent part (that they used to sell for $40) that wears out every few years. Now they don’t even make that part any more. Newer models have a similar part that is just almost-microscopically different and it doesn’t work in my oven.
Did the contract originally come with a phone that you have replaced with one you bought on eBay? I’m wondering if the company might be talking about the phone they originally sold you.
I had a cellphone that had an odd charger. When it went kaput I went to the local AT&T store and the gal there took one look at the cellphone, sniffed and said “we don’t sell chargers like that. Try Radio Shack or EBay” and sashayed away from me. So I went to Radio Shack where the dude said no, sorry, have you considered buying a new phone? And I had. So I did. From him, because he was polite and tried to help. Little Miss Condescending missed out on a sale because I wasn’t going back there again.
I cannot say for sure but you may need to get a new phone, just because it supports 4G does not mean that it supports VoLTE which is what the networks are switching too exclusively. You will still be able to transmit data, so if like what happens in my household most calls are using apps rather than actual voice calls, then it won’t be a problem, but otherwise you might be out of luck. Here are several articles on what the change actually means and how it might affect your phone:
It’s over 6 years old, which means it is ancient in terms of modern technology. Six years ago, I still had my iPhone 5. It was a good phone for its day. Now, it would be an ancient piece of crap.
This is a tangent but Huawei actually has a good reputation globally. In 2020 they shipped about 18% of all smartphones worldwide, more than Apple. The only place they have a problem is in western countries that are suspicious of their ties with the Chinese government. I have a Huawei smartwatch and I have still not seen one that I would buy instead.
Cell phones have to share limited electromagnetic spectrum. At some point we need to stop supporting the old slow phones so the new faster ones can make better use of the airwaves.
More importantly, it probably only runs Android 6 or maybe 7, which means that it probably hasn’t been getting security patches for quite a while and is likely vulnerable to security exploits.
That’s kind of the unspoken problem with keeping a phone too long- they quit updating the operating systems on them, and they gradually become more and more vulnerable as hackers and others find out unpatched security holes.
Plus, I doubt that a lot of modern apps can even run on such an old OS or hardware.
It runs EMUI, which is, I think, a modified Android. Her version is EMUI 5.0.4. Looks like about a 2016 update or so? I think we had updates after 2016, though.
It runs every app we have and gets updates to those apps still quite often. We’ve experienced no incompatible apps, at least not that we’ve encountered yet…
This link might help, it’s one of the most exhaustive sites I’ve ever found for details on phones and carriers. These people are some serious phone geeks!
As I mentioned above, the issue is whether the phone will support VoLTE (Voice over LTE), just having a 4G phone does not mean that it does. The article I linked above shows how to find out if a T-Mobile phone supports it, I am sure you probably can use something similar to figure out if your wife’s phone will or will not as well.
Former tech support for a major cellular company reporting -
I’d be very careful about ignoring the message. Yeah, other posters are 100% correct, in that when you have a BYOP (Bring your own phone) the carrier has minimal information on how it’s going to work with network changes. In fact, we would often be trying to force updates down system to actually get the phone to work on the network (addresses, protocols, literally pages of stuff although iPhones were normally a non-issue).
The two big issues we saw back when I was working there were the phasing out of 2G/3G networks and people on legacy phones that were going to have no service in those areas. Although for what it was worth, the carrier offered ‘free’ basic phones (non-smart) or a $50 credit towards a new phone to those we thought would be affected. The second issue is bands - different phones and different manufacturers do not transmit on the same frequencies. If your phone is 4g, but only on say one of the bands your carrier supports, and that frequency is being retuned . . . yeah you could be out of luck.
And since VoLTE has been discussed not going back over it.
So from a quick look, your wife’s phone supports Bands 1(2100), 3(1800), 7(2600), 20(800 DD), while your carrier uses a mix of the standard 850 MHz and 1900 MHz blocks, but falls over to AT&T for 4G/LTE. If AT&T is repurposing bandwidth (which they are), and which is beyond your carrier’s control, you could be out of luck. I’d look for any AT&T news for your area about service changes and check the bands they are continuing to support.