Can I still use a 4G phone with verizon?

Joined
Sep 10, 2005
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Location
Erie, PA
So regardless wether or not you like verizon or not make no difference. In my area verizon was king and AT&T was not. I would drop calls very rarely so I put up with verizons non existent customer service.

I just retired my LG V20 4G phone for no other reason than it was dropping calls quite often. Our company phone Samsung S20 FE 5G would not. So I assumed that because 3G is going away after decmeber of this year, that Id need to upgrade.

So basically what I am asking is are basically all 4G phones obsolete now for use with verizon?
 
No. I use it exclusively.
In fact, it's very rare that you would find 5G available from ANY carrier right now, unless you are in a major city market.
And speaking of market, that's all 5G is, a marketing ploy. Albeit, at the expense of a lot of other spectrum that was far more useful.

5G is all over the place with T-Mobile, far, far away from the big city.
 
I know that Verizon is going through changes here in relation to old phones, my dad's friend had to get a new phone because sometime in June it would no longer work and I know dad has an old phone too and both of those phones are just the basic flip phone, they gave his friend a TCL and he hates it due to the sound quality.
 
My stepdad is coming to reality that his ancient IPhone 4 isn’t 4g capable. He threw the Verizon letter stating it won’t work after this falI said “best of luck to you”
 
4g/LTE is not even close to being Obsolete.
At the same time I will disagree that 5g is only available in major cities. I am nowhere near a major city in my hometown and 5g is pretty much standard and I also just last week took a 550 mile road trip from SC to FL each way and majority of the time had TMobile 5G service, including my resort which I could have if I wanted tethered to my laptop.
I posted not to long ago someplace in a BITOG thread my screen shot of my phone in a rural area near where I live with 800 Mbps download speed.
The resort I just left I had 400 Mbps.
TMobile now the USA second largest carried is light years ahead of ATT and Verizon but they will catch up for sure so I wouldnt base a buying decision on that.

A couple hundred million Amercans can now get TMobile 5g Tmobile claims 97% of the population by the end of this year with get what they call extended range 5g.

BY the end of 2023 90% of TMobile customers will get what they call Ultra Capacity 5g currently 1/3 of the population get its, which includes areas of my rural town and how I got up to 800 Mbps. What's kind of cool is my IPhone 13 tells me if it is just 5g or UC5g (ultra capacity)
Honestly except for cool factor if you dont care about this, the 4g/LTE is fine for now. But the future, well, it just depends if it matters to you, again, for now. It didnt matter to me and what I bought at the time it didnt matter but now I think its cool and glad I have it. 🙃
 
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5G is all over the place with T-Mobile, far, far away from the big city.
Yes it's even here in rural WV. My son works for Sprint and has a 5G phone. He was out here one day and checked his phone and was shocked that he had 5 bars of 5G signal.
 
so if "g" isnt for calls and voice why does my new sammy s20 and v60 have that the older 4g phones like the s7, droid turbo II, and v20 have?

Itsa so bad with the old phones you cannot call anyone the coverage is like 1989 all over again.
 
This shows where the FCC is..... I can still use my trusty AT&T "Bell" land line phone, but I can't use a 3g cell phone?

We need cell phone standards, not let them drop a generation cause "we need frequencies for 6g....." Force a standard, and stop wasting our time.
4g is plenty fast and there is no need to upgrade on the customers end!
Upgrade the cell tower equiptment, double capacity etc. The dropping of 3g is a crime.

Many people use their cell as a PRIMARY phone, therefore they(wireless providers) need to off FREE compatible phones for the network upgrade. Just as they had to install battery packs at homes when they dropped copper.
 
The cell companies like the newer g's because they can multiplex more phones and more data into their given slice of licensed frequencies. So it's more efficient and they make more money.

They still support 3g and 4g but as time goes on, over fewer frequencies (so they'll get crowded and less fun to use). They consider it "legacy" product. Stuff like vending machine credit card processors, On-Star, medical devices, etc. They'll stop allowing new phones to get hooked up while maintaining current customers for a while, until they kick those customers off.

They don't need more frequencies-- they already are hoarding a bunch that used to be used for free over-the-air TV and other services. They need to plant more towers with each tower covering smaller cells. But that's an investment they'd rather not make.
 
the 3G network is going way...finally...it was supposed to be retired in late '18.
Verizon 3G was still using the old CDMA standard. that's what is going away. (as an aside, the Canadian Carriers that used it retired CDMA back in 2016.)
The 4G Standard is based on GSM, (which is why verizon started using sim cards with the switch to 4G) which is what basically every other US carrier and most international carriers used. CDMA was hardly implemented outside N America.
I started to say more, but eljefino basically covered it.
4g isn't going away anytime soon.
so if "g" isnt for calls and voice why does my new sammy s20 and v60 have that the older 4g phones like the s7, droid turbo II, and v20 have?

Itsa so bad with the old phones you cannot call anyone the coverage is like 1989 all over again.

it is though...with the switch to 4g, the calls are basically VOIP. it's all routed as data. (if you still have a landline from the local Telco, they most likely do the same thing at the local office. everything is digitized and routed like any other data)
that's why VZW stopped activating anything older than an iphone 6 several years back.
even though the 5 has 4G radios, they were only implimented for the Data connection. voice still went over the 3G CDMA network.
 
From the Verizon Website :
Device models that are 3G (CDMA) and 4G that do not support HD Voice (Non-VoLTE) will be impacted. Some of the popular impacted devices include:

    • 3G basic phones and smartphones
    • 4G LTE smartphones that do not support HD Voice
        • Apple iPhone 5, 5C, 5S or Prior
        • Samsung Galaxy S4 or Prior
 
From the Verizon Website :
Device models that are 3G (CDMA) and 4G that do not support HD Voice (Non-VoLTE) will be impacted. Some of the popular impacted devices include:

    • 3G basic phones and smartphones
    • 4G LTE smartphones that do not support HD Voice
        • Apple iPhone 5, 5C, 5S or Prior
        • Samsung Galaxy S4 or Prior
I think that's because they are changing from CDMA to GSM. To the OP's question, 5g is "bandaied" onto 4G. The range of the 5G signal has a max of 1,500 feet

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/how-far-does-5g-reach

3G CDMA Network Shut off date set for December 31, 2022

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/3g-cdma-network-shut-date-set-december-31-2022


After reading those they are mostly the same thing, I've been phone shopping and tons of 4glte phones claim they don't work on Verizon CDMA when "some" do have the 4 G channels listed in the specs. Off topic 32 bit Android needs to "retire" already.
 
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My stepdad is coming to reality that his ancient IPhone 4 isn’t 4g capable. He threw the Verizon letter stating it won’t work after this falI said “best of luck to you”
I stopped using my old 4 over 3 years ago bc Verizon was supposed to drop 3G. Boy, I was gullible, I could still have been using it all this time instead of buying an SE!
 
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4g/LTE is not even close to being Obsolete.
At the same time I will disagree that 5g is only available in major cities. I am nowhere near a major city in my hometown and 5g is pretty much standard and I also just last week took a 550 mile road trip from SC to FL each way and majority of the time had TMobile 5G service, including my resort which I could have if I wanted tethered to my laptop.
I posted not to long ago someplace in a BITOG thread my screen shot of my phone in a rural area near where I live with 800 Mbps download speed.
The resort I just left I had 400 Mbps.
TMobile now the USA second largest carried is light years ahead of ATT and Verizon but they will catch up for sure so I wouldnt base a buying decision on that.

A couple hundred million Amercans can now get TMobile 5g Tmobile claims 97% of the population by the end of this year with get what they call extended range 5g.

BY the end of 2023 90% of TMobile customers will get what they call Ultra Capacity 5g currently 1/3 of the population get its, which includes areas of my rural town and how I got up to 800 Mbps. What's kind of cool is my IPhone 13 tells me if it is just 5g or UC5g (ultra capacity)
Honestly except for cool factor if you dont care about this, the 4g/LTE is fine for now. But the future, well, it just depends if it matters to you, again, for now. It didnt matter to me and what I bought at the time it didnt matter but now I think its cool and glad I have it. 🙃
I would avoid ATT like the plague-they have oversold their network to so many crappy MVNOs that it’s becoming hard, in certain areas (talking poor, underprivileged areas to be PC) to make any calls or do anything with them, including 5G. To make calls, a VolLTE phone WILL be required when the 3G networks go away, even a non-VoLTE 4G phone WILL NOT WORK!
 
so if "g" isnt for calls and voice why does my new sammy s20 and v60 have that the older 4g phones like the s7, droid turbo II, and v20 have?

Itsa so bad with the old phones you cannot call anyone the coverage is like 1989 all over again.
The “g” is used for everything now, the old CDMA 3G voice network (which is/was Verizon’s best feature), is going away, likely to be sold off for something else. I’m seriously looking into switching EVERYTHING to T-Mobile-5G wireless home internet, family plan for new(er) iPhones, YT TV instead of cable, the whole shebang. T-Mobile seems to be serious about making deals, the others seem bent on bending people over…
 
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