These smartphones will stop working soon

The world of telecommunications has radically changed our way of life.
Today, cell phones, created simply for calling, have become an indispensable accessory, vital for many people, capable of solving many problems of daily life thanks above all to the internet connection.
Wireless cell phone networks have made an incredible evolution in the space of a few years.
It was the 80s when the 1G, or first generation, network was created.
Just 10 years later 2G arrived which also marked the debut of SMS.
In the early 2000s it was the turn of 3G which offered the possibility of surfing the internet quickly for the first time.
4G, the fourth generation of cellular networks, arrived in 2009.
Starting from 2018 we have arrived at 5G, a technology that within a few years will sweep away all the others with an increasingly faster and more stable connection everywhere.
In practice, in the space of 30 years we have gone from simple phone calls to surfing the internet with very fast and secure connections.
Technology moves forward and leaves behind all the obsolescence of old devices that may soon no longer work properly.
This is due to the gradual dismantling of the old 3G networks that new generation cell phones no longer use.
An operation that several operators in Italy have already carried out with the expectation of total divestment by 2025.
Goodbye to 3G networks and old cell phones will no longer work Vodafone and Tim have already announced that they have completed the switch off of their 3G networks.
Vodafone was the first operator in Italy to conclude operations as early as February 2021.
Then it was Tim's turn which concluded in October 2022.
That leaves WindTre and Iliad.
read also Vodafone, goodbye to 3G: what changes, dates and list of municipalities involved The former announced the monitoring of its repeaters and said that the switch off will not take place before 2025 in any case.
Iliad has not yet communicated its intentions but, since in Italy has created a joint venture held 50% by WindTre and Iliad, it is likely that Iliad's proprietary 3G repeaters will also be turned off by 2025.
Why are 3G repeaters turned off? These are now networks that almost all cell phones no longer use, apart from the older ones that do not support 4G technology.
The decommissioning is necessary to free up frequencies that can be reused and reassigned to the new standards to improve the mobile Internet network.
The curious fact is that the 3G networks will be switched off first, as we have seen, by 2025.
Then it will be the turn of the 2G networks with the switch off which should take place by 2029.
This is for a specific industrial reason.
In fact, some devices still continue to work using the 2G network.
Alarm devices, electricity meters or POS for payments with credit cards and debit cards still use so-called M2M SIM cards, machine-to-machine i.e.
"from machine to machine", which navigate on the 2G network.
This network, although very slow, remains very robust and is still widely used.
For this reason we are proceeding to decommission the 3G networks first and then it will be the turn of the second generation ones: to give industries time to adapt their devices to the most modern technologies.
What will happen to old cell phones The consequence for old cell phones enabled up to 3G and no further will be that they will no longer be able to surf the internet, unless they want to do it in 2G (networks which, as we have said, will remain active at least until 2029), but the connection will be very slow and it will seem like going back to the old 56 Kbps analogue modems.
An old phone like the iPhone 4 or an old Samsung Galaxy S can be used either only for calls or only via a wireless connection for browsing.
The alternative will be to change your cell phone to a more recent model that supports 4G.
read also Wi-Fi, 3G, 4G, 5G: dangerous radiation yes or no? Let's clarify