It will affect most of the world in a few years. Lurk around in the forum, and you'll find some posts about which phones and carriers work well in the US. (I assume that's where Chicagoland is?) VoLTE is enabled on an experimental basis for several phones running UT now.
uKale
I'm no porting expert, but to me there seems like they pick mostly well documented phones that already has a history of being worked on by other tinkerers like Lineage, Mobian, PMOS. They also tend to be cheap ish to buy used or they come from a company with a good history with open bootloaders, like the Fairphones.
There are users of the FP5 in areas where VoLTE is required now, including the US (though not on all carriers, as I understand it). VoLTE is enabled on an experimental basis for several devices. There are a few quirks to iron out, but it's coming!
The porting of devices is done by volunteers owning the devices and not being afraid to brick them, which leads to a pretty weird list of supported devices.
I wouldn't do Ubuntu Touch on the P3a if you're in an area where VoLTE is required. It seems this model is too old to get the treatment it needs.
Ubuntu Touch doesn't officially support it yet, but it is working reliably for several phones now.
I daily drive Ubuntu Touch on a Fairphone 5. It's not without quirks, but I like the experience. Many practical and nice native apps, Android app support through Waydroid, banking and things that would require Google Play verification I solve through the browser. Fairly good battery life, VoLTE is solved for the FP5 and some other models (which has been an issue with many Linux phones) and the community is very active solving issues and helping each other day and night.
I'm very open to this option, if I can find a supplier near me.
I'm guessing probably not, but maybe we have something headquartered in Europe, designed in Europe?
Aha! Nothing very drastic then.
How does this indicate that they are working on a new name? Like, are they leaving "Fairphone" behind?
I grew up with my brother throwing used computer parts on my bed whenever he upgraded something, in case I wanted to reuse them. He also gave me a copy of Windows 98, and later XP that I reused every time I did a major hw upgrade. But one day the XP CD-rom was just too old, but I was too young to start working and had no money, and so Linux came into my life.