Re: Wifi Calling Service on BYOD Unlocked Phones
boringusername
Master - Level 1

@saintsteve wrote:

@boringusername wrote:

@billymac108 wrote:

you are correct. verizon is intentionally blocking wifi calling as well as using your phone as a hotspot/tether


Wrong. Yes wi-calling is blocked on some unlocked phones. Not a Verizon thing blame the phone manufactures. Apple, Samsung, Google devices have no such issues They do not block hotspot/tether. Quit with the conspiracy theories If you dislike and don't trust Verizon why are you still giving them money?


Wrong. VZW intentionally blocks wifi calling on unlocked non verizon phones. The only work around other than buying a verizon phone is to have the Verizon firmware flashed to your unlocked phone.

Verizon is playing the "good cop bad cop" game by blaming the manufacturers. It is true that they provide the firmware on the phones but are blocking wifi calling on non verizon phones in accordance with their contact with verizon.

I had two identical Moto g6 phones, one unlocked and one Verizon branded. No option for wifi calling on the unlocked phone and wifi calling working perfectly on the VZW model.

After several calls to Moto tech support it was established that Verizon blocks wifi calling on non VZW phones.

Look out Verizon, John Lagere is coming to get you!

 


Wi-fi calling works on unocked iPhones, unlocked Galaxy phones( at least 9 and 10 series )and unlocked Pixels.

Re: Wifi Calling Service on BYOD Unlocked Phones
tgm1024
Enthusiast - Level 2

@saintsteve wrote:

Wrong. VZW intentionally blocks wifi calling on unlocked non verizon phones. The only work around other than buying a verizon phone is to have the Verizon firmware flashed to your unlocked phone.

Verizon is playing the "good cop bad cop" game by blaming the manufacturers. It is true that they provide the firmware on the phones but are blocking wifi calling on non verizon phones in accordance with their contact with verizon.

I had two identical Moto g6 phones, one unlocked and one Verizon branded. No option for wifi calling on the unlocked phone and wifi calling working perfectly on the VZW model.

After several calls to Moto tech support it was established that Verizon blocks wifi calling on non VZW phones.

Look out Verizon, John Lagere is coming to get you!


You're wrong. (At least as of June, 2019 in my experience with the S10+, and absolutely beforehand as evidenced by other's reports.)

Unlocked iPhones (reportedly), Google Pixel 3 (reportedly), and now my current phone, an Unlocked Samsung Galaxy S10+ bought directly from Samsung (My OWN first hand experience), ALL WORK WITH WIFI CALLING.

The option is grayed out at first, but if you go to a verizon rep at a Verizon store, he can turn it on for you.  He did for me.  Some say a phone call will suffice.  You need to do this even if you previously had wifi calling enabled....just do it again.  PS.  DO NOT GO TO BEST BUY FOR THIS.  I've rarely seen such disinformation as what comes from those guys.

Once it's turned on by the mother ship, the option to turn it on is then UN-grayed out.  Select that, and then it will go into a download of all necessary Verizon software (with a warning "this could take a while...").  Yes, this was on an Unlocked S10+ purchased DIRECTLY from Samsung.

Sorry for all the emphasis, but there's been too much emphatic assertions to the contrary here.

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Re: Wifi Calling Service on BYOD Unlocked Phones
stuffnjunk
Newbie

Thanks for this info. It got me started down the right path for sure.

My experience today (June 28th, 2019) with an unlocked Galaxy S9 was that wifi calling is available to enable under the phone app--> select the 3 dots in the upper-right corner--> select Settings. I found wifi calling there and enabled it without issue.

For advanced calling features, the feature does need to be enabled on the line (double-check with VZ customer support to confirm it's still on the line after the phone swap). Mine was no longer enabled after the swap, so they reenabled it. Go into the main phone settings-->Connections-->Mobile Networks and enable 'VoLTE Calls'. This is the same as HD calling on a Verizon specific device (so I was told). Once I enabled VoLTE Calls, I could browse the internet while on a phone call. Previously I could not.

How this helps others.

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Re: Wifi Calling Service on BYOD Unlocked Phones
hunterd648
Newbie

not entirely true. it works fine on my unlocked iphone 8 plus with the latest ios. you just need to be in a 4g area to register or update your emergency address. 

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Re: Wifi Calling Service on BYOD Unlocked Phones
DaveSedona
Newbie

Hello tgm1024,  can you provide more detials about what exactly was turned.  I don't have any grayed out feature on my phone.  I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge that I bought unlocked from Samsung and it has been working great on t-mobile, including Wifi Dialing.  After porting to Verizon today I realized Wifi Dialing is no longer a feature showing anywhere in my settings or applications.  I talked to a Verizon Tech and his only solution is to buy a Verizon phone, he said Verizon does not support Wifi Dialing on unlocked phones.  I would even be interested in rooting my phone to enable this feature if anyone has any suggestions there.

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Re: Wifi Calling Service on BYOD Unlocked Phones
Garyrate1974
Enthusiast - Level 1

They are shady.  Same thing happened to me on my Note 8.  I rooted the phone, turned on the service, and Verizon still refused to turn it on.  Did you hear that???  I turned it on, was all set.  They illegally claim they won't update the software because it is a Samsung manufactured phone.  Who do they think they are kidding? Samsung makes the phones either way.  They want to make sure you can't leave because you don't have the additional antennae included in the unlocked phones.  Hear that???  Port your number... nope... trade in your unlocked phone to be artificially and synthetically locked in.

They forced me to send my Samsung phone back, and buy their piece of garbage.  Same phone, but ran so much slower, battery drained so much faster too.  Just awful the cronyism that goes into these companies.  I pray that Tmobile/Sprint don't merge.  I was just looking into switching to T-mobile to get away from the over-priced Verizon.  I have to go into airplane mode just to use the wi-fi calling.  I never had to do that with Sprint.   Truth is only that Verizon inundates you with their bloatware to try to sell you needless services.

It's like buying a TV and the cable company saying nope... you can't use our signals on that device.  Imagine that.  That is the next thing that is going to happen.  Break the companies up.  They are wasteful, and not doing anybody any favors.    

Re: Wifi Calling Service on BYOD Unlocked Phones
tgm1024
Enthusiast - Level 2

 


@Garyrate1974 wrote:

They are shady.  Same thing happened to me on my Note 8.  I rooted the phone, turned on the service, and Verizon still refused to turn it on.  Did you hear that???  I turned it on, was all set.  They illegally claim they won't update the software because it is a Samsung manufactured phone.  Who do they think they are kidding? Samsung makes the phones either way.


No, that part isn't quite right.  My S10+ (bought directly from Samsung) *does* work, however the software compatibility issue is both the issue of the manufacturer's sofware and the carrier's.

As a software engineer, I've dug into this much further than I wanted to, but I was curious and this is what happens AFAICT:

1. In my case, the WiFi calling software from Samsung for the S10+ (bought from Samsung) wasn't entirely compatible with the Verizon network so after a rep enabled it on their end, Verizon auto-downloaded a couple small pieces of software when I got home (perhaps linux driver level for all I can tell from here) and it worked.

2. MOTIVATIONS ASIDE, In the case of older phones, they either (A)Never wrote the software for downloading to non-carrier phones (this part is silly, because it's the same code and simply a matter of making sure you set up an appropriate packaging to not assume that certain pieces of software are already there that would be there if the full carrier skin was there) or (B)Couldn't figure out how to separately download the parts of the carrier skin that it needs.

3. In the case of T-Mobile, the manufacturer drivers of various phones (for all I know it's because of the boot loaders...I simply cannot fault-isolate that without looking at the source code) have built-in WiFi calling connected software that is compatible enough already to work (with T-Mobile).

4. The built-in WiFi calling software of all recent Google Pixels is compatible enough with Verizon to work out of the box.

5. In the case of Apple, there's never any issue.  Everyone bends over backwards so far to make sure their WiFi calling always works no matter what, because no one dares tick them off for any reason and it's job 1 of Apple and Verizon to have no hiccups.  In fact, I have no doubt whatsoever that Apple is the very first manufacturer they worry about.  Apple mobile devices (a single manufacturer with their single OS) are now at 45% saturation.

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Re: Wifi Calling Service on BYOD Unlocked Phones
tgm1024
Enthusiast - Level 2

@DaveSedona wrote:

Hello tgm1024,  can you provide more detials about what exactly was turned.  I don't have any grayed out feature on my phone.  I have a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge that I bought unlocked from Samsung and it has been working great on t-mobile, including Wifi Dialing.  After porting to Verizon today I realized Wifi Dialing is no longer a feature showing anywhere in my settings or applications.  I talked to a Verizon Tech and his only solution is to buy a Verizon phone, he said Verizon does not support Wifi Dialing on unlocked phones.  I would even be interested in rooting my phone to enable this feature if anyone has any suggestions there.


Honestly, I wish I knew.  It seemed like a mini flurry of tap-tap-tap-tap-drag-tap-tap-drag-tap on the Verizon tablet that I couldn't see.

I don't think that rooting your phone is going to help in this case.  You might be confusing two things, I'm not sure.

To clarify, just so we're on the same page:

1. Rooting a phone, means giving yourself "root" access (think of it as super-user or Administrator priviledges on Windows).  It allows you to turn things on or off that any phone would not normally allow (locked or not).

2. A locked phone just means it's locked to a carrier.  Now hold on, this part gets dicey.  The carrier writes their own bootloader, and in the case of Verizon, many bootloaders cannot be cracked any longer, which completely removes your ability to either root or root-and-reload-new-ROM.  (PS: Unfortunately, "ROM" in this case is a misnomer used among hackers. *rolls eyes*  It doesn't mean read-only-memory.  It simply means a different Android image.)

2B. To get a sense as to how brutally comples the bootloader can be, my ancient Verizon locked Galaxy Note II from 2012, the SCH-i605 version, still has not been cracked.  Some have announced that they have managed to "root" it even with the Verizon bootloader intact, but no one can replicate it without bricking the bejeebers out of their phone.

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Re: Wifi Calling Service on BYOD Unlocked Phones
cliffj0441
Newbie

Its funny, straight out of the box my Note 8 unlocked phone wifi calling worked and it even connected to my verizon network extender. 30 something software updates my phone will no longer wifi call or connect to my verizon network extender???

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Re: Wifi Calling Service on BYOD Unlocked Phones
NewOldcustomer
Contributor - Level 2

@Garyrate1974 wrote:

They are shady.  Same thing happened to me on my Note 8.  I rooted the phone, turned on the service, and Verizon still refused to turn it on.  Did you hear that???  I turned it on, was all set.  They illegally claim they won't update the software because it is a Samsung manufactured phone.  Who do they think they are kidding? Samsung makes the phones either way.  They want to make sure you can't leave because you don't have the additional antennae included in the unlocked phones.  Hear that???  Port your number... nope... trade in your unlocked phone to be artificially and synthetically locked in.

They forced me to send my Samsung phone back, and buy their piece of garbage.  Same phone, but ran so much slower, battery drained so much faster too.  Just awful the cronyism that goes into these companies.  I pray that Tmobile/Sprint don't merge.  I was just looking into switching to T-mobile to get away from the over-priced Verizon.  I have to go into airplane mode just to use the wi-fi calling.  I never had to do that with Sprint.   Truth is only that Verizon inundates you with their bloatware to try to sell you needless services.

It's like buying a TV and the cable company saying nope... you can't use our signals on that device.  Imagine that.  That is the next thing that is going to happen.  Break the companies up.  They are wasteful, and not doing anybody any favors.    


You should have left the phone alone.    The S8 and S9 series from Samsung will convert to other carriers once they get the next OS update.  (From marshmallow to nougat, nougat to Oreo).  Samsung removes the software block with the update.  

See photo of S9 converting to Verizon DC1A5F8F-2C0F-440C-B0E7-AD21EB305801.jpeg7E119F4A-7FA1-45A0-A913-7DA7A8C7DC46.jpeg20DCCA48-47CC-4C3B-B7C7-AB721DDFB4DC.jpegFE5BA97D-3660-46D7-8FB8-22CC9159A3FE.jpeg10230987-23F2-498B-9823-B84606F54755.jpeg

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