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How to send a fax from an Android phone
(beehaw.org)
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this post was submitted on 29 May 2024
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Asklemmy
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Well that’s a tech I haven’t heard of in a while. I suppose it tracks that if telegrams were still in use till 2006 that fax’s would still be in use today.
To help answer your question, a cursory search turned this up:
https://www.howtogeek.com/218505/how-to-fax-a-document-from-your-smartphone/
https://www.getfaxing.com/2016/05/02/can-i-use-my-mobile-cell-phone-as-a-fax-modem-to-send-a-fax/
Honestly, it should be possible to send faxes from your cell phone for free though. Or from a laptop using your cellphone’s voice line. It’s a phone after all and fax machines sent their data over phone lines. I seem to remember using my cell phone for dial up internet back in the day, so it should have been possible to send faxes at that time as well. Unless there is an OS limitation, I can’t see any reason why that might have changed, even with the changes in tech since then. Hell of a rabbit hole you’ve found for me! Thanks!
@Sinfaen@beehaw.org
Digging into it further it looks like modern phone technology has become incompatible with fax and modem technologies. Seems to be something to do with how voice over IP (VOIP) compresses the voice line which damages any digital signal sent over it. It looks like this affects both cell phones and modern landlines as well.
The only real options in 2024 seem to be to use a fax service, or to purchase a landline that explicitly supports fax and use a fax machine or a computer with a modem to send the fax. A fax service would probably be cheaper for a one off fax. Thanks again for the rabbit hole. That was interesting!
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/can-i-hook-up-a-fax-machine-to-my-iphone.485116/
https://superuser.com/questions/748154/use-a-smartphone-as-a-dial-up-modem#748163