It's 2018, and phone compatibility can still be a question!

[nrg_svr]

Hi all,

There's a question somewhere coming in all of this, but I wanted to start a discussion on the topic of phone compatibility, seeing as I actually just bought one of the very nice Motorola Moto G5 unlocked phones at Costco a few days back for under $200 with taxes.

I was curious if I needed to do anythng with the APN settings to allow MMS... which led to my searching the community, and coming across this topic:

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Knowledge-Base/Setting-up-Data-APN-on-your-phone/ta-p...

I thought to follow a couple of the links and actually see what it had to say about my newly purchased G5.

The link to: https://apn-canada.gishan.net/ resulted in what I think is not up to date info - namely that the phone is not compatible with 4G on the Public Mobile network. I checked the same phone against Telus, and there it indicated some compatibility.

I thought I would see if the other link to https://willmyphonework.net/ would yield different results, and indeed it did. At least it gave the same answer for Public as it did for Telus. (Some compatibility.)

All that said, some of the more 'authoritative' topics here on phone compatibility are a bit dated now, and we've also had December 2017 come and go, and that really changes the landscape as far as locked phones and other issues are concerned. Plus networks continue to evolve.

Has anyone put together a list of 'the best' phones that will pretty much 'always' work in 4G or LTE on Telus? (Or know a quick link to such a list.)

Is there a rule of thumb?

Motorola seems to be favoured on the Rogers network - 4G shows full compatibility on the G5 for example. But are there phones which work BEST on Telus?

More just a curiousity, but as I am signing up friends and getting them to switch, I need to keep this stuff in mind.

[srlawren]

@nrg_svr as @wetcoaster noted, pretty much anything meant for the North American market, provided it's not locked to another provider, will work fine with Public Mobile.  If in doubt, you can always post here and someone will help determine compatibility.

There are some models out there that are considered "world phones", such as my OnePlus 5T.  Other than storage/memory and colour variations, there is only ONE model and it has enough frequencies and bands to work pretty much anywhere in the world.  I hope they continue this trend, started with the 5, with all future models.  There are other models from other manufacturers like this as well, but the majority of phones have region-specific sub-models.

[mpcdesign]

Here is a great site that has the APN settings.  You will just put in your Make of phone, Model and then the network you are on and it will come up with the settings you need.

https://apn-canada.gishan.net/

Be sure you have cellular data turned on.

Here are MMS settings from @s2scotty, @Luddite

If you have multiple APNs listed, ONLY one, the PM one, should have the APN type "default".

Including "mms", as in, "default,mms" makes it clear TO THE PHONE to route MMS via this APN/carrier.  IT APPEARS CRITICAL THAT there are NO SPACES between the words and the commas (e.g. "default,<space>mms" = wrong and "default,mms" = correct). A trailing space proved an issue on a phone (e.g. "default, mms<space>" = wrong and "default,mms" = correct). Like "default", only the correct and active APN should include the "mms" tag.

*  Name: Mobile Internet

   APN: sp.mb.com

   Proxy: Unspecified

   Port: Unspecified

   Username: Unspecified

   Password: Unspecified

   Server: Unspecified

   MMSC: http://aliasredirect.net/proxy/mb/mmsc

   MMSC proxy: 74.49.0.18

   MMS port: 80

   MCC: 302

   MNC: 220

   Authentication type: Unspecified

*  APN type: default,mms

*  APN roaming Protocol: IPv4

   Bearer: Unspecified

   MVNO type: GID

   MVNO value: 4D4F

and don't forget to reboot the phone after!

**By the way, am not a moderator, am just a guy who is just trying to help out when I can! If this works for you click on 'Accept as Resolution' to close this post!

[wetcoaster · Accepted solution]

There are so many different regional models of the same phone out there... (for most manufacturers) - it gets really interesting when people order directily from overseas. Most low to mid range phones directly imported from China might support band 7, but not the wider used bands here in Canada. This forum sees posts related to problems arising from this on a somewhat regular basis, unfortunately. (As long as Rogers is still maintaining the 2G frequencies, some of them might work there, Telus and Bell don't have that fall back.)

I generally find it more reliable if I get a hand on a list of frequencies supported by the phone and then compare that to the Telus frequencies.

https://productioncommunity.publicmobile.ca/t5/Discussions/LTE-network-fundamentals/m-p/198799/highl...