Hi everyone, my carrier has informed me that 2G voice service will soon be shut down, and I’m still making calls using it. I’m supposed to enable VoLTE. This can be accessed through “4G Calls.” Unfortunately, I can’t find these settings in the settings menu on any of my Samsung devices. When I search for VoLTE, the options appear, but when I tap them, I’m just taken to the SIM card settings. And there, the “Call Options” are grayed out. I urgently need your help—this is affecting three Samsung S20 FE devices and one Samsung S9+. All are running the latest e/OS version 4.3-a14 (September 20, 2016). Thank you.
Depending on your carrier, probably some general bad news, S20 FE known quirks IMS…interestingly it seem better for the S9 / S9+
Most or all Samsung phones do not have VoLTE or VoWifi working on official custom ROMs at the moment.
As @Doppel-D pointed out there are some unofficial builds for both Lineage and /e/OS that have a working implementation of those protocols.
If you search the current forum, you will find that a developer even offered to merge those implementations in the official builds of/e/OS for some Samsung phones. You can have a look on the gitlab of /e/OS for your specific device if there are some dev branches or recent commits or work items about IMS/VoLTE. But as Samsung S9 is not sold officially anymore by murena, there is, I guess, little incentive to spend some developing and testing time on this.
On the other hand, installing those unofficial builds yourself will work well for at least a few years , which will delay the obsolescence of your device by allowing you to pass phone calls on a 4G-only network from a custom rom. Yet, they will not be updated often if at all, and never receive OTA/automatic updates in the system in any case
Thank you all very much for your replies.
However, I use three Samsung S20 FE phones at home—I bought them specifically because they’re supported by E/os.
Fundamental question: What exactly is the reason
that this option is missing, since VoLTE calls are officially supported?
I read in another post on this topic
that it has to do with the carrier—they have to unlock the IMEI for VoLTE (or something like that).
Where exactly can I check if an “update” is planned for the Samsung S20 FE?
Would a stock ROM be an option? I’d find that very, very, very annoying,
because I want to be completely independent of Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Apple, etc. At home, I use my own cloud, which covers all aspects of modern communication.
Or would LineageOS be worth a try?
Thank you very much.
Historically, all Samsung devices that have VoLTE capability on stock Android have lost that capability altogether if the default OS is replaced with an alternate version of Android (a custom ROM like LineageOS, or /e/OS, which is based on LineageOS). Reason: Samsung implements a proprietary form of IMS/VoLTE that wasn’t possible to port to custom ROMs or reverse-engineer.
Now, luckily, there is a working VoLTE implementation that some developers have built into custom ROMs for a few Samsung models. Your best bet is to contact the developer who’s making those /e/OS builds here to see if it’s possible with your specific model. (EDIT: @ronnz98 )
You could return to stock Android in order to have VoLTE, but that would be detrimental to your privacy, as you noted.
I like to do my own research and always check things out for myself first,
but in this case, I’m not sure how I can get in touch with the developer(s).
Does anyone have any leads for me?
I added his name to my comment. See the “EDIT.”
S20 is not officially supported by /e/OS, it has a community build. /e/os documentation will tell you what community build exactly implies.
A search in this forum gives [UNOFFICIAL BUILDS] Testing only! Samsung Galaxy S20 series for /e/OS-a16 3.3 - #7 by ronnz98
Why? the best explanation are three paragraphs in this readme section. Samsung never tried to be compatible with Androids standard way to do ims calls.
Depending on if it’s a S20FE r8q (Qualcomm Snapdragon) or r8s (Exynos) you’d be in the same boat as this thread (also having a S9): Samsung and calls shutdown
If you’re technical adept, having feedback for the experimental builds (S9 or any of the S20FE editions would carry that topic forward. Hundreds of Samsungs to rescue ![]()
Probably much lower cost to just get another phone with the desired features. Pixels come to mind and can be found very low cost after a bit of hunting.
Officially supported Samsung devices in IodéOS now include a set of patches which allow VoLTE to work in those devices. Recent unofficial builds for these devices should pick up these patches the next time they are built.
There are unofficial builds for your device (r8s), publicised in the iodéOS community forums, but they have not been updated since July. Worth keeping an eye open there for new buiilds whihc may include these patches.
(I won’t provide links, because linking to a ‘competitor’ project in /e/’s forums would be bad manners
. Internet search is your friend)