Mind you Voda and Three have just merged (well, it’s a 51:49% deal in favour of Voda) which brings the number of actual network operators in the UK down to 3 - Voda/Three, O2 and EE
I think that’s the point really - multiple factors at play making it hard to tease them apart.
I’ve been using the Moto G8+ as a hotspot - my Tesco SIM refused to work in my DIY 4G box GoK why, I hadn’t touched the setup since it was last used though the SIM had been in the G8 as Tesco needs to “see” the phone in the UK one out of two months to keep the unlimited data when roaming working.
It’s a black art. I can’t seem to get the Lebara SIM to work in one 4g router (TP-Link), yet it works fine in another (Strong). I could swear it worked before in the TP-Link. I’m going to try swapping it again in a few days.
My TP link has sma connections for aerials and I have an external aerial to fit but it wasnt on the urgent to do list and of course requires a hole being drilled and the discussion on where to drill continues with management
Bringing this up made me check XDA Forums…wow- I could still put an Android 15 ROM on this old thing. I have the time but I’m not sure what the point would be. OTOH if I brick it nothing lost really…
I have two functional modems - a Quectel EP-06 4G card and a T99W175 (Lenovo variant) 5G card. I have a third T99W175 which I did the wrong personality transplant on (it was originally the Dell variant IIRC) and I can no longer communicate with it, however I haven’t lost much as it never worked with anything.
I have three SIMs - an iD Mobile one - which we’ll pass over as I haven’t tried it with the modem cards as it’s my phone SIM, a Tesco (O2) SIM and a Lebara UK SIM. Oh and the Lycamobile one.
The Tesco SIM has never worked in the 5G card. It worked perfectly in the 4G card both at home and in France until this trip when it flatly refused to work in anything but the phones. The Lebara card worked in both modems in the UK but flatly refuses to work in the 5G card here, works OK in the 4G card but only has 10G of data so really it’s just for testing.
The Lycamobile SIM works in the 4G modem - I’ll be trying it with the 5G card later
In short whether things work is some randomly unspecified combination of the SIM, location, modem and probably what colour underpants M Macron is wearing.
Pretty much what I was going to say. Somehow I have always swung back to mid range Motorolas as they are generally solid, good value for money and usually have the least messed-with and full-of-preinstalled-bloatware versions of Android.
Their cameras tend to suck a bit though.
The biggest downside to the 8G+ is no 5G
I tinkered with replacement ROMs back in the CyanogenMod days - I think it was on a Moto G3 - these days I probably wouldn’t bother because it’s a faff to install and quite a bit of stuff tends to not work well, or at all. In any case the Moto 8 isn’t supported by Lineage OS which gets us into the shadier world of custom ROMs on XDA and the Edge 40 pro is on Android 15 already (it probably won’t get 16, I suspect).
Depending on where you are obviously I have only seen the 5g signal showing on my wifes realme 10. Took her sim (lebara) popped it into my LG V60s and nothing but 4g.
She was on Tesco before and no service in France at all despite trying everything to connect. Certainly is a dark art. Phone reviewers dont seem to mention use in low reception areas, the realme 10 was a cheap emergency purchase and it quite a surprising model, the 14 people say is not as good.
Quite - the tower here is 4G only, the main reason to see how the Lycamobile card does in the 5G modem is that it has a better 4G radio (ue cat 20 vs cat 6) and more MMIO (4x rather than 2x) so might eke out slightly more 4G performance.
Start with the chipset - eg for my Moto 40 edge pro GSMArena tells me it’s a Qualcomm SM8550-AB Snapdragon 8 Gen 2
If I google that it appears to support 4x4 MMIO (but not whether it has capability for Spatial Diversity or Spatial Multiplexing - you want the former in low signal areas and I think it is the basic mode supported by all MIMO implementations).
Knowing what the phone can do is only part of the picture though - you need to know what the tower can do as well.
Again, it’s blark art territory. Impossible to review without knowning all the parameters and you can’t even rely on the number of “bars” because there’s no relationship between number showing and actual signal strength. there are apps which will dig out the “real” numbers but they are not much use when trying to decide what phone to buy.
When I break or wear out my phones, I but cheap 2-sim phones on Amazon. I have a UK ASDA PAYG sim which costs nothing to use - I usually keep about £5 on it. I also have a French FREE sim which WAS €2 a month (unlimited txts and 2 hours of calls - I recently upgraded to €2.99 a month as that includes UK calls/txts.
OK, had the Lycamobile card a week now so some observations
Speed is good - but not during the day - seems to like to drop down top HSPA+ a lot, though that might be local conditions as all three SIMs seem to struggle - but th UK SIMS manage to maintain a 4G connection (but they could be roaming between operators in a way that the Lycamobile card cannot)…
The “headline” rate of (currently) 9,99€ for 250Go seems good - but there appears to be a 5€ top-up charge making it 14,99€ in total. Bit sneaky.
There doesn’t seem to be a top up option lower than 9,99 either so it’s really 14,99 a month for 250Go - not the best deal (the T&C sort of suggests you might be able to get away with topping up every 60 days though that would mean the phone only working half the time).
Somewhat randomly the Tesco Mobile SIM has decided it wants to work this week
Perhaps the way you bought it, but if you just order a SIM and get a plan, it is what it is.
Our experience with it in the 4g router was not that great. It kept dropping out, though speed was OK. My wife still has an account on her phone and it seems to work fine there. We’re keeping it because every other SIM in the house runs on SFR (Reglo/Lebara/Prixtel) and it works flawlessly for us, but we just want something that will run in the event SFR craps out for a bit.
Probably - as noted above it was bought because it was easy to get it from Amazon without having to face the catch-22 of needing a valid French phone number to complete the online ordering process for a SIM. A handy side effect is that I now have that all important French phone number (which will receive SMS even when used in the 4G box). If it doesn’t work out in terms of data I have no loyalty to lycamobile.
Nor do they to you. They are a bit of a PITA to deal with. I had a decent deal with them, but went in to change my credit card. When I updated it, I lost that deal and had to get something a bit more expensive (more data, but I didn’t need anymore). Then, they offered me, as a continuing customer, a better deal than I had at first. When I went in to check on it, I find that I have the higher priced deal, but with the smaller amount of data. I’m about to blast them…and if they don’t fix it I’m going somewhere else (still would like to keep a Bouyges for redundancy, but there aren’t that many).
Don’t know if related, but I could not top up my Tesco sim online last week,
After calling help line, and told they were working on it, I was given free top up, but the charge then appeared on my credit card. I contacted them again and the charge disappeared . Tesco maybe having hacking problems??
