[Replicant] Is the Galaxy S3 going to be forcefully obsoleted on 7/1/22?

A. F. Cano afc54 at comcast.net
Sat Jan 15 18:27:57 UTC 2022


Text received 2 days ago (January 13):

Valued customer, we're providing you formal notice that T-Mobile is retiring
the 3G network on 7/1/22.  You'll need to replace your phone before 7/1/22 to
continue service, which may include the ability to make 911 calls.

My phone is a Samsung Galaxy S (not an S3 - an SGH-T959 running a really
old version of Cyanogenmod) but I've been trying to buy an S3 to put
Replicant on.  I have tried twice.  The first time, after a 3 month wait,
I received the wrong phone from China.  The second time I received an S3,
but it wasn't a GT-I9300, it was a useless to Replicant SPH-L710.

Not knowing the actual capabilities of the S3 wrt cell networks, I went
looking.  This review:

https://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9300_galaxy_s_iii-review-761.php

says:

Quad-band GSM and quad-band 3G support
21 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA support

It seems pretty obvious that the first part is not going to be useable
after 7/1/22, but will the S3 still be useable after that thanks to the
second part?  Will T-Mobile still support "Quad-band GSM" after 7/1/22?

If the S3 is going to become totally useless after 7/1/22, what options
remain for us replicant hopefuls after the 3G network goes dark?

I understand that the GT-I9305 is still not working properly with replicant.

I'm even considering a pine phone pro, but that's not yet available and is
a totally different animal.

https://www.pine64.org/pinephonepro/

Considering the end of the 3G network, what is the preferred phone for
replicant now?  Is Replicant going to be murdered by planned obsolescence?

I'm so totally fed up with locked phones that I'm now considering spending
amounts of money that would have seemed outlandish months ago, like for the
pine phone pro.

Totally disgusted by the phone software situation on modern phones.

Augustine


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