Recently purchased a OnePlus Nord with the specific intention of installing UT on it. I checked the ATT list of compatible phones as this was the only supported UT phone that was also approved by ATT which was the OnePlus Nord N100 (BE2011).
Bricked the phone first time around because the N100 was on Android 11 not 10.5.2 or 10.5.3. I got it out of dump mode and flashed the global 10.5.3 version and the UBports installation went really smooth after that. Setup was a breeze. Wifi connected, text messages were working. Then I went to make test calls, nothing went through. Inbound? Nada also.
Took the phone to an ATT store near my house. The lady spent about 30 mins trying to get it to update in their system. Did some more digging around in the menu's and finally said, "Oh yeah, that's why. This is a 2G phone. We already shut down both our 2G and 3G networks. This phone is using those to connect to the 4G network." Then I told her that the phone was on the list of compatible phones. She never showed me the list, but said the list she has didn't have the phone as one they supported. She also told me that within the year ATT will be shutting down their 4G network as well and everything will be transitioning to 5G and nothing else.
I went back home, pulled the list and confirmed the phone was on the list. Called back. Spent two hours climbing the tech support ladder until I got to some senior support team. Tech support guy said when I was making calls it wasn't even hitting their network so he couldn't even log the information or debug it because they just couldn't get any information from the phone. This pretty much confirmed what the woman in the store was saying about how its trying to connect to a non-existent network.
At the end of the day, not a big deal. I'm going to throw this back on Ebay for what I got it for with UT still loaded onto it in case someone else can get it to work with their carrier.
My fear is that as UT is focused on older phone models and carriers are pushing more and more users to upgrade to 5G phones while shutting down their older networks. What is the runway looking like to support newer phones in the future? I love the idea of the UT interface and everything worked great, but are we looking at a dead end for adoption in the US if we can't port to 5G phones soon??