iPhone 5 or earlier Does the iPhone 5C call over 4G or 3G

[emrtech101]

I have an iPhone 5C that I wanted to try to use for one week. But when I tried to use my SIM card in it, it did not work. I am wondering if the 5C calls over 3G or 4G. I know that the 3G network has been shut down on some carriers (including mine), so it would make sense if it calls over 3G.

 

[now i see it]

if you’ve got a new 5G compatible SIM, maybe it won’t work with old phones.

 

[JCCL]

VoLTE is only supported on iPhone 6 and newer

Make phone calls with Voice over LTE (VoLTE) - Apple Support

You can make high-quality phone calls with VoLTE on an iPhone 6 or later. To make these calls, both phones need to work with VoLTE.

support.apple.com

 

[Andeddu]

The 5c is unable to run any firmware past 10.3.4 and iOS 11 is required for 4G in some countries. The 5c is a 4G LTE compatible phone however you will also need iOS 11 which is not supported on the 5/5c.

With 3G down, this is why you will not be receiving a signal .

 

[eyoungren]

If your carrier is Sprint, Sprint does (or used to) voice/SMS/MMS over 1xRTT which is not even 3G.

As others have mentioned, despite being an LTE phone you have to have VoLTE to do voice over LTE and the 5c doesn't do that.

As a comparison, in 2017 when I was using my old Sprint iPhone 5 (your 5c is the 5 guts in a plastic enclosure) on T-Mobile the best I could get was HSPA+ (3.5g). T-Mobile did sell the iPhone 5 later on as fully LTE compatible but that's was a specific to T-Mobile device and as far as I know it still wasn't VoLTE.

 

[emrtech101]

Thank you everyone for your help. I think that I have figured out why it does not work. For anyone that was wondering, the carrier I use is Cricket.

 

[sewerx]

I'm still using iPhone 4 - my carrier (T-mobile) shut down 3G recently and it doesn’t impact calls.