Even beyond that, most non-US phones don’t support western hemisphere bands. The EU makes some fantastic handsets, but they use modems that limit function on the other side of the pond.
So it is purely a function of “won’t connect”.
Although, to your privacy point, perhaps not getting signal is actually the bold move that wins.
Another one of those things to think about at scale. So many vibe-coded web sites have such terrible performance. Computers burning power on absolutely nothing, phones draining battery on absolutely nothing. They are causing energy usage to go way up across the planet by lazy ass design that isn’t tested or verified all across the board.
Pixel has better US band support. All the open phones simultaneously never have US or that entire hemisphere’s band support for some terrible reason.
Pixel has all the US 4G and 5G bands. Ironic, although Pixel 9 was likely the last to have such freedoms.
Oof, you’re in a world of hurt with that phone’s band support. Especially on T-Mobile which is majority 5G now.
4G supported bands B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B7, B12, B17, B20, B66
T-Mobile has a sliver of band 12 in most markets, so that helps for indoor/low-band coverage. No band 71 support means you miss out on their nationwide 600MHz low band, however. No band 25, which means you can’t use T-Satellite. No band 41, so you can’t use T-Mobile’s high speed data band (although in most markets it is all 5G now so you wouldn’t be using it anyway.)
On T-Mobile you’re using B2/B66/B12 in markets that still have LTE running on those bands, and it will continue to reduce as they shift further to 5G.
May want to start planning your next phone move now and/or return it if you still can.
US Mobile is terrible. You can’t even change your e-mail without contacting chat, and then they don’t even always do it. Changing SIMs can result in their “migrating” you to another plan that costs more with no way back. Getting your port-out PIN, you again have to chat with their chat people. It’s suuuuper-grifty. Plus you’re putting an MVNO between you and your cellular services. US Mobile has had outages in the past where their customers lose cellular but the main carrier was fine because there wasn’t a third party injected in the middle.
One will find USM has shills all over the web trying to plug their mediocre service when one could go to Visible, Cricket, or even the prepaids of the tier-1 carriers.
Yeah, they’re such a pain I indeed wasted that many words describing why they should be avoided.
You’re not wrong, but also, T-Mobile is still evil, and majority-owned by Deutsche Telekom, with plans to merge it and Telekom into a full German-owned property. Which by itself is pretty evil. All while also still making T-Mobile evil.
T-Mobile isn’t the place to switch to. They went evil.
Announcing Linux growth wouldn’t be in the best interest of US mainstream media’s billionaire owners so it would go unreported. Can’t increase Apple and Microsoft stocks if the word gets out people are freeing themselves. US journalism has effectively died.