Sonim XP5S VoLTE

[clonehappy]

Does anyone know if the Sonim XP5S is VoLTE capable on AT&T?

I'm looking at one of these to use when camping and hiking but if it's only compatible with voice on 3G I'm not interested.

I cant seem to find any word one way or another anywhere on the internet. Anyone have any ideas?

Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

[october262]

according to this - https://www.phonearena.com/phones/co...es/10714,10864 it does not have VoLTE and here is the PDF guide - https://www.sonimtech.com/wp-content..._EN_240418.pdf

[balleron24z]

clonehappy (and october262), I just did a quick Google search and found this: https://www.att.com/buy/phones/sonim...k-on-grey.html

If you get it from AT&T, it will work with VoLTE. I'm not sure how Sonim designs the software on these things, but it's possible the same phone from another carrier (or unlocked, if applicable) would also work with AT&T's VoLTE, but it's not guaranteed.

[clonehappy]

I ended up getting one. I suppose it's not overall a bad phone for an ultra rugged candybar phone and it does work with VoLTE.

The downside, to me anyway, is that it's really just running Android. They don't come right out and call it Android, and you can't install apps on it (directly, rooting/sideloading not withstanding) or anything that might make running Android actually useful, but it's still Android. They advertise 20+ days of standby, but I bet you'd be hard pressed to even hit 7 unless you live directly under the cell tower, turned off data and didn't touch it the entire time.

I wanted something very durable that would run a basic dumbphone style OS for lots of stability, standby time and not having to worry about constant updates or spyware running in the background. Instead, I've already dealt with 5 system updates each of which reset a bunch of my settings and it stopped responding to the unlock key today which meant a battery pull since I couldn't find any way of hard resetting with key combinations.

For something targeted towards first responders and other emergency personnel, I find it unacceptable that I couldn't unlock the phone without pulling the battery (which required a screwdriver to open the back cover), good thing I was in my office and not in any actual life threatening situation!

Not to mention that now when it boots, I get the Linux penguin as the bootloader image. It makes me wonder if the OS install is corrupt or otherwise compromised. Anyway, it'll go in my bad decision bin with a lot of other cell phones, and I'll just use an iPhone in a heavy duty case with an external battery for long trips in the woods.

On the upside, the sound quality is good, LTE reception seems average, the speakerphone is loud, so for many people it's a winner. It would be for me, too, if it didn't run Android, but if you can look past the shortcomings or get issued one because you're in public safety or a construction worker I'm sure it would get the job done until your shift is over and you go back to your actual smartphone.

Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

[CircuitSwitched]

I ended up getting one. I suppose it's not overall a bad phone for an ultra rugged candybar phone and it does work with VoLTE.

The downside, to me anyway, is that it's really just running Android. They don't come right out and call it Android, and you can't install apps on it (directly, rooting/sideloading not withstanding) or anything that might make running Android actually useful, but it's still Android. They advertise 20+ days of standby, but I bet you'd be hard pressed to even hit 7 unless you live directly under the cell tower, turned off data and didn't touch it the entire time.

I wanted something very durable that would run a basic dumbphone style OS for lots of stability, standby time and not having to worry about constant updates or spyware running in the background. Instead, I've already dealt with 5 system updates each of which reset a bunch of my settings and it stopped responding to the unlock key today which meant a battery pull since I couldn't find any way of hard resetting with key combinations.

For something targeted towards first responders and other emergency personnel, I find it unacceptable that I couldn't unlock the phone without pulling the battery (which required a screwdriver to open the back cover), good thing I was in my office and not in any actual life threatening situation!

Not to mention that now when it boots, I get the Linux penguin as the bootloader image. It makes me wonder if the OS install is corrupt or otherwise compromised. Anyway, it'll go in my bad decision bin with a lot of other cell phones, and I'll just use an iPhone in a heavy duty case with an external battery for long trips in the woods.

On the upside, the sound quality is good, LTE reception seems average, the speakerphone is loud, so for many people it's a winner. It would be for me, too, if it didn't run Android, but if you can look past the shortcomings or get issued one because you're in public safety or a construction worker I'm sure it would get the job done until your shift is over and you go back to your actual smartphone.

Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

Can you swap it for an XP8?


Sent from my iPhone using HoFo

[clonehappy]

I probably could, but to me it really wouldn't be worth the trouble at this point.

After using it a bit more it seems to have stabilized for the most part. I'm just still a bit put off by a dumbphone that has all the downsides of a smartphone OS without much of the upside, when I was hoping for a good old fashioned proprietary OS that doesn't need security or stability updates every other week.

But since I have it, when I have time I'll look into sideloading apps and things to see what all I can make it do. It's more of a project to me than anything now.

Sent from my Moto Z3 Play using Tapatalk

[BadBrent]

When I had my old Sonim XP5 on AT&T, it advertised 20 days of standby time and for the most part it seems to be entirely true since I had a FirstNet plan for work. Typically I would only charge my phone every 10 days or so if I used it a lot, but could easily go 2 weeks and still have 30% charge left on it. The phone had LTE compatibility on it as well, and I could install PDANet and tether off of it's LTE signal and get about 20mbps of bandwidth on my laptop if I needed it and it saved my bacon a few times when my home internet went down. The XP5 is such a rugged phone that you could smash someone upside the head with it and not even blemish the device...it held up extremely well and is a perfect phone for someone who just wants calling and minimal texting and is rough on their phones like a construction worker or similar.