OrangePi 4G-IOT can't connect to T-Mobile?

dan

Well, that explains some things! US LTE bands are marked as optional, as are WCDMA bands and GSM bands for US support. Is there any hope of these being update-able to enable those bands, or should I ask for a replacement?

jonsmirl

dan replied at 2018-5-26 05:47
Well, that explains some things! US LTE bands are marked as optional, as are WCDMA bands and GSM ban ...

The hardware we have will only work in China. I don't believe he has made any of the "optional" band boards. Note that the product description was changed after I pointed out to the owner that the boards were built wrong and did not match the description. OrangePi is now fully aware that an error that has been made. I have not seen a statement yet as to what they plan to do about it.
According to aliexpress they have shipped about 250 boards. Probably 200 of those went to countries where the radios are not going to work. For the US/EU this board is a paper weight as far as cellular is concerned.  A good PR gesture would be to make a batch of the "optional" boards and mail them out to the previous purchasers located in countries where the original 4G-IOT won't work.  I suspect they are going to have to make the "optional" board otherwise it is unlikely that they will recover the cost of designing the board and then porting Android 6/8 without being able to sell into the US/EU market.

A larger question - is the 2G-IOT in the same mess? What about the announcement of the new 3G-IOT? It is fine with me if they make cellular boards that will only work in China, but they need to clearly label them that way.

This also demonstrates why they should pay $1-2K and do FCC testing for these boards. Obviously they would have failed when the lab went to test B2/B4/B17. Replacing 200 boards is probably going to cost about $10,000. Spending that $1-2K on FCC testing would have detected the mistake before the boards shipped.

dan

I think it might work on the worst major network in the US, Sprint, thanks to Band 41 support, but I'll need to acquire a SIM card to test this. I wonder why we're the first to run across this issue and post about it though, you'd think in the past 3 months someone else would have ran across this issue.

Wrt the $10k in bad boards, 200 boards at $45 each is only $9k, and based on the lack of complaints about this issue, I doubt OrangePi will have to exchange that many boards. The ones sent back will be a bit of a loss, but those will eventually end up being sold to someone, as LTE bands 3 & 7 are very common outside the USA.

andr2000

I wonder why we're the first to run across this issue and post about it though

;) I can't get mine to the point you guys are at as I cannot find any display that works with the board.
Probably the rest of us experience other issues as well, thus, no complains yet.
I was hoping they release u-boot at least, so we can start playing w/o Android, but this doesn't seem to
happen any time soon...

dan

I ended up finding a monitor that supported Nvidia G-Sync, but that was purely me trying every monitor I could get my hands on. Most monitors can do the 720p resolution just fine, but support for 48hz via HDMI is extremely rare. I'd think Freesync enabled monitors would work with this board too!

jonsmirl

My monitor has Freesync which is what I suspect lets it see the 48Hz signal.

The source code for the HDMI driver is in the source download. The HDMI chip definitely supports 60Hz output so it is just a matter of someone fixing the HDMI driver up. The chip also supports 1080P.  When I originally googled around for this chip I ran across a much better device driver for it inside a Qualcomm Android port. I've lost the link, but it shouldn't be too hard to find again. Just Google for the chip number and Qualcomm. Note that OrangePI has added an external MIPI to HDMI chip, since OrangePI added it they wrote the driver. The driver they have provided is not completely finished.

Meanwhile my Nokia 1 ($110 shipped to US, $70 in India) has shipped. It is same MT6737M CPU. Plus it has US cell bands (Austrailian model), a touchscreen, a camera and a battery. Everything I need to do the testing I wanted to do. So my plan is to check out my code on the Nokia 1, and then if it works out I can revisit the OrangePI hardware problem.

This chip has excellent potential if the hardware can be straightened out. It is virtually the same as an Allwinner A63 plus it has Linux 4.4 and Android 8.1!  When you factor in the cost of 2.4/5G wifi the chipset price of the MT6737M (minus cellular) is the same as the A63.  So why mess with Android 6 and Linux 3.8 when you can get much better code with the Mediatek chip.

OrangePi should make a version of the 4G-IOT without cellular and price it at $30.  That should get more people interested in this chip.

lrou

> OrangePi should make a version of the 4G-IOT without cellular and price it at $30. That should get more people interested in this chip.
Yeah, but 4G-IOT is just interesting as long as there's 4G (and GPS). As the main gimmick of that board.

dan

If I could just get a 4G LTE hat for the OrangePi R1, that'd be much more useful than the 2G-IOT, 3G-IOT & 4G-IOT boards.

hxLexie

I tried the board on Google Fi (supports band 41). No luck there.

I'm able to see "Project Fi 4G" when selecting network Operators but its unable to register a connection.

I've also set the IMEI number to one I know works on that network and its still unable to register with the network.

Has anyone had any luck connecting to Sprint? Or is this board just a paper weight at this point.

Edit: Sprint Sim (Boost supports band 41) on the way, will update in a couple days with results.

xyzzsdfl

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