Pixel 3a XL experience
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@joshndroid sorry for any confusion, I was responding to @rik , Oh yes, it is a lot of fun tinkering.
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@wsanford with the amount that you pay, I feel blessed that I pay less ($7.22). It might be that is not a plan. It's like a . . refill? I just pay for 28 days of service when I can. I'm not sticked to a plan.
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@wsanford said in Pixel 3a XL experience:
Still no MMS but I can send and receive pictures on telegram, which my friends and I use
I am sure we can get MMS to work with "fiddling" with your APN settings. Make sure you have DIFFERENT APN entries for "Data" and "MMS" entries. If they are the same APN for 2 entries then UT gets confused. Also, MMS group messages don't work, but photos do. Finally, you need to have wifi disabled to receive / send MMS (yet another shortcoming for now, hopefully we can work this out in the future to always prefer cellular data for MMS so it works with wifi on or off).
If you are stuck / confused on APN settings, please post what they currently are and we can get it sorted.
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@rik Thank you for all the help! I've been a Linux Admin for a number of years now but I'm new to learning phones and all the information is very much appreciated, I'm sure it will be of help to others as well.Downsizing pic's didn't work well so here are a couple links to the settings.
T-Mobile MMS Internet/web -
@thousandtopics Yeah, I wish I could have gotten out cheaper but I need hot spot and unlimited data for work and kids for On-Call work and kids doing remote schooling sometimes. It's working out very well.
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@wsanford here are the T-Mobile APN settings that were reported to the UBPorts "North America Carrier Issues" group that seem to work:
Used For: MMS Name: T-Mobile MMS APN: pwg MMSC: http://pwg.mmsmvno.com/mms/wapenc <Proxy, Proxy Port, User Name, Password ALL BLANK>NOTE: the above APN and MMSC are identical to the US Mobile settings (T-Mobile re-seller)
Used For: Internet Name: T-Mobile Internet APN: epc.tmobile.com <User Name and Password BLANK>So, can you try those and then possibly reboot to see if it works? There were some bugs around changing settings "not sticking" so let us know if that is a problem for you. Again, to test MMS you need wifi OFF, cellular data ON. Good Luck!
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@rik Success!!! Thank you so much. It was odd though. It didn't work at first, so I drove into town and tried where I knew I would have the best signal, and still nothing. I came home and deleted the failed attempts and then tried again and it sent and received pictures just fine.
The settings are holding just fine after reboots.
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@wsanford great news! There is a bug in there that prevents using the "internet and mms" option for a single APN setting. But good to hear you have it working even though a bit kludgy
Looking ahead, I would like to dig into making MMS work while on wifi (by effectively "forcing" cellular data for all MMS activities regardless of if wifi is on or off), then look at group mms (now the messages are actually received to your phone but no app knows what to do with them, so that is why no error message even is created, they just are not handled), etc.
Getting "full features of MMS" working well would be a big win for the North America market I suspect.
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@wsanford your needs are way different than mine.
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I have to say that this last update in the dev channel make the batery last for the most time since I got the phone. Whatever you have done. Don't change it, maintain it. This is highly appreciated.
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@rik North América also Includes Canda and Mexico carriers?
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@rik It's been working great all day today, and it's getting pictures just as fast as my S9 on Verizon. Thank you again! Turning off the WIFI is a bit of an inconvenience but at this point, I really don't mind it as I don't want it connecting to any insecure WIFI along the way, so I was already turning it off when leaving the house. If there is ever anything I can be of help with testing on a Pixel 3a XL, shoot it my way, I'd be happy to help.
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@thousandtopics right now there are a few Canadians in the group as well, could be that Mexico has similar carrier issues, I am not sure.
For example, the "trickery" of US carriers detecting IMS capable handsets and then "behind the scenes" switching over incoming SMS to be delivered via IMS was a shared problem for some Canadian carriers as well. The "solution" of disabling IMS for the Pixel 3a "solved" incoming SMS issues for US and Canada, but not sure about Mexico.
It was trying to sort out "good old basic SMS" that initiated creating the "North American Carrier Issues" group because no one in Europe / Asia had any issues with incoming SMS. With carriers around the world moving at different times for VoLTE, etc., it seemed relevant to have a group dedicated to North America carrier issues.
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@rik oh well I'm from México, so No problems with SMS at all. The only complain I might have is the audio quality in calls. . . It varies a lot. And I don't see the use of using MMS since family and friends use Telegram and different more complete chat services.
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@thousandtopics
MMS is like SMS but with more than 160 characters pssible, and photos also, not talking about universality of the protocol. -
@thousandtopics said in Pixel 3a XL experience:
@rik oh well I'm from México, so No problems with SMS at all. The only complain I might have is the audio quality in calls. . . It varies a lot. And I don't see the use of using MMS since family and friends use Telegram and different more complete chat services.
Yeah, I would love to not use MMS but have to use it for friends and family that use it exclusively (that seems to be a lot of people in the USA). Incoming SMS was broken for at least Pixel 3a users in the USA until a few months back so once this got straightened out I agree with you that it is fine.
About audio quality, I don't have noticeable issues but I wonder if it is related to UT not supporting VoLTE yet.
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@keneda again, Telegram, matrix, etc works better than mms. And even if we here are more used to use wifi, a lot of places have public wifi or share it as part of a service in a café office or supermarket, deparment store, so. . . We don't tend to use a lot of mobile data, but since therer are other apps that handle that better than mms . . I mean, it's good to have it just in case.
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@thousandtopics
Each of those "other apps" are not compatible between them, that's where MMS is usefull, i don't have to install any app, create any account, and can send one to anyone knowing he/she will receive it, no matter what "other app" he/she prefers.Mobile data is not the problem here, i have 60 GB for 13€ monthly.
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@keneda which is great. To be completely honest, here there are plans the most expensive for at least close to 20 eur that might just offer 3 gb, offering "unlimited service“, which is a non-sense and "free“ Facebook Services + Twitter/Tiktok - referring them as "Social Networks“, not a very fair trade. Since you're paying to be a facebook subscriber isn't actually free. The rest of social networks are excluded of course. If I ask if ir supports Mastodon, Telegram or pixelfed I'm being seeing as a weirdo . . . Hahaha it is so funny.
So, I just pick up refill of 6,4 euro (to let you imagine the cost) for 1 gb or 2gb. So . . I prefer to donwload all the things I'm going to listen/see/read before going outside, and for essential comunication a telegram to the family group, memes or audio to some friends. I just receive most of the sms from companies, and that's about it.
I wouldn't know what to do with all that data available, maybe stream several episodes from netflix, but hey I still pay for internet at
Home, so, I have to use it anyway. -
I flashed another Pixel 3a XL this morning for a friend that I got interested in this, cause flashing misery loves company right? LOL He tried for two days but could not get Google Play Services to flash the phone back to 9.0.0 (PQ3B.190801.002, Aug 2019). I tried this morning and couldn't get it to work either, so I resorted to doing it manually and it went off without a hitch. Here is what I did. And just for the record, I'm on Linux, Ubuntu to be exact. You should have ADB and fastboot installed on your computer.
Go to the Google play services site and instead of "Flash" click on "Link" next to the 9.0.0 (PQ3B.190801.002, Aug 2019) image. It will download the zip. Unzip it and cd into it in a terminal.
Start with the phone unlocked and on in a regular operational state with developer mode and USB debugging enabled. Bounce (turn off and on) USB debugging so you get the pop-up to always allow from this computer.
In the terminal and run "adb devices" to make sure you can see it. then run "adb reboot-bootloader" which will take you to the fastboot screen.
The "Flash-all.sh" script from the zip you downloaded will fail, at least it always did for me, due to the "if" statement at the beginning. Instead, cat the script and just run the fastboot commands in it manually. There are only a few to run and remember you have to be in the directory these files are in to run the commands. This worked on two phones so far. I then ran the 0.8.8 installer and like magic, it was done. Like anything else in Linux, there are several ways to do anything and you never know when you might have to do something different for some unknown reason. I believe in picking up these referb phones, there is just no telling the how's or why's in which they were wiped and what it will take to get them to flash. But here's yet another way.
