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Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

androidauthority.com

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Re: Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

#71

Post by numpad0 »

notpushkin wrote: post #44
tsimionescu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That still uses their infrastructure at some point, as you are still using your carrier's phone number when you make a VoWiFi call.

Yeah, but what’s the problem they’re trying to avoid? Bad SIP implementation not working with their servers? Just text the user: “Hey, you’re using an unsupported VoWiFi stack, if it breaks – that’s on you.”

"That's on you" is not something that works at cellular scale. You're going to end up fighting some mafia scheme microcosm forming around that little thing.

Re: Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

#72

Post by mananaysiempre »

Another article that also includes an explanation of the current state of the hack (workaround known, patch[1] in development); of GrapheneOS (“security patch” pulled in, but official VoLTE/VoNR/VoWiFi override toggles introduced[2] in device settings as a replacement); and of other phones (coming to all in-support Android phones near you, sometime before December depending on the quality of said support):

https://piunikaweb.com/2025/10/10/october-2025-pixel-update-...

[1]: https://github.com/kyujin-cho/pixel-volte-patch/pull/387

[2] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/956

Re: Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

#73

Post by mananaysiempre »

walterbell wrote: post #24
Namidairo wrote: post #6

> that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere It did a great deal more than that. It also allowed the toggling of VoNR, which apparently affected the fallback behavior of some people's services. (Ie. It would fall back to LTE and not roam back to 5G data unless nudged manually) However for me, it would enable backup calls over a secondary sim card's data, which would allow text and calls overseas without the usual ext…

> that toggle is enabled for my carrier... but only on iOS WiFi calling with SIM1 number via SIM2 data has always worked on iOS, so I was surprised when it didn't work on Pixel.

This is the “Backup calling” toggle in Pixel IMS, and carriers are fond of blocking that function.

(TIL: Vo“WiFi” over wired Ethernet over USB doesn’t work on AOSP or Pixel and never did, for no apparent reason except noöne caring to make it work.)

Re: Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

#74

Post by mananaysiempre »

charcircuit wrote: post #19
ycombinatrix wrote: post #9

How on earth is this a "vulnerability"? It needed adb shell access.

From the article: >To gain these elevated privileges, Pixel IMS uses Shizuku, an open source Android app that lets other apps run processes as the shell user. It's possible for an app to use wireless debugging to debug the phone it's running on to get shell permissions.

And it still is, for anything except those carrier overrides.

Re: Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

#75

Post by mananaysiempre »

cortesoft wrote: post #31
numpad0 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

VoLTE was an afterthought and carriers don't trust untested vanilla implementations. So they only allow known-good phones.

Ok, but why block VoWiFi?

From what (little) I understand, VoLTE and VoWiFi are quite similar under the hood—VoLTE is more or less SIP, and VoWiFi is that same SIP over IPsec. You see how this would be an interoperability nightmare (not that I’m excusing the telecom people for getting us into this mess). Furthermore, some carriers get testy about you avoiding roaming charges by using VoWiFi (while others actually encourage it).

Re: Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

#76

Post by mananaysiempre »

pjmlp wrote: post #47
pbasista wrote: post #45

I do not see a rational reason why a mobile carrier should have any say in which connectivity technology is enabled for use with its mobile network on a particular phone model. It should work based on standards, mobile carrier's capabilities and phone's capabilities. If a phone supports capability X, such as VoLTE, then it should just work with all mobile carriers that support that capability. No conditions. As an im…

It had been a thing since mobile phones existed. Pre-paid cards that required paying for unlocking the phone firmware, eventually forbidden on EU countries. Vodafone famously had their own firmware on Nokia N95 in Germany that disabled tethering,.... It starts by regular people being trained to accept that lack of quality and restrictions are normal in digital world.

Depends on how the rollout of mobile networking historically went in a particular country. (Mostly, from what I can see, if it was the entrenched landline monopolists from the start or if they had to outcompete a few upstarts first.) In some places (Russia, Ukraine) you have to explain to people what a carrier-locked phone even is, and they get (understandably) appalled at the concept. Others (Turkey) have went as far as to have infra to IMEI-block you after you spend too much time in the country until you pay up.

Re: Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

#77

Post by rs186 »

toast0 wrote: post #29
rs186 wrote: post #20

This phone/carrier nonsense is just stupid. I had lots of trouble with Wi-Fi calling on Android phones: * A phone purchased outside US/unlocked but non mainstream (aka not Samsung/Pixel) phone purchased in the US cannot enable Wi-Fi calling despite having hardware & software support for it, as it's not a supported model * An at&t Samsung phone that is later unlocked cannot enable Wi-Fi calling when using a Visible SI…

> Not to mention the voicemail mess. On Android, each carrier provides their own voicemail app that is not integrated with the phone app. This doesn't seem to be the case for T-Mobile US prepaid?

I don't have first hand experience with that, but I did find this page: https://www.t-mobile.com/support/plans-features/t-mobile-vis... which does not mention prepaid/postpaid plans. I definitely could be wrong.

Re: Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

#78

Post by martinald »

toast0 wrote: post #27
martinald wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is having so many bands a bad thing? Demand for data is so much higher now you need (ideally) hundreds of MHz of spectrum in dense areas. You need some way to partition that up as you can't just have one huge static block of spectrum per auction. The issue with LTE isn't bands, it's the crappy way they have done VoLTE and also seemingly learnt nothing for VoNR. They should have done something like GET volte.reser…

> Why is having so many bands a bad thing? Demand for data is so much higher now you need (ideally) hundreds of MHz of spectrum in dense areas. You need some way to partition that up as you can't just have one huge static block of spectrum per auction. Because different countries use different sets of bands. That was true for GSM too, but quad band phones were reasonably available. Many phones were at least tri band,…

With a "quad band" LTE phone of bands 2, 7, 20 and say 12 you would get pretty much worldwide coverage. It'd just be slower because you can't access other ones. Not sure what the issue is?

Re: Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

#79

Post by mananaysiempre »

userbinator wrote: post #12

The days of GSM/3G were great. All you needed was a quad-band phone, of which plenty were available from numerous far-East companies but many based on the same or similar chipsets, and you'd have connectivity in the whole world. The situation with LTE is far worse, with several dozen different bands and many opportunities to whitelist and effectively do user-agent discrimination. Even if you bought an unlocked device…

> LTE is far worse, with several dozen different bands

The national radio regulators are mostly to blame for that part, as far as I understand. So ultimately the national militaries, who hogged most of the relevant spectrum for radar(?) at a time when you couldn’t viably communicate over it, and will now never let go of it, at least not in a coordinated fashion (see: 5G rollout).

E.g. 2.4 GHz WiFi avoided the same problem by using a mostly-unregulated band, which as far as I can tell (but can’t reliably confirm) seems to have been essentially allocated for microwave ovens (a rotational absorption band of water molecules, which is why it’s difficult to heat up frozen things in a microwave).

Re: Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

#80

Post by bifocal »

pbasista wrote: post #45

I do not see a rational reason why a mobile carrier should have any say in which connectivity technology is enabled for use with its mobile network on a particular phone model. It should work based on standards, mobile carrier's capabilities and phone's capabilities. If a phone supports capability X, such as VoLTE, then it should just work with all mobile carriers that support that capability. No conditions. As an im…

> As an imperfect analogy, consider a road, representing a mobile network. This road has some capabilities, such as speed limit. There are cars driving on this road, representing mobile phones. And then consider that a road management company, representing the carrier, would impose different speed limits on different cars, depending on whether they are affiliated with the road management company or not. > Would that be acceptable in a physical world?

A number of cars on the road today can be remotely disabled by a device built-in to the car.

While personally I think this is risky, in the U.S., we also have police, sheriffs, highway patrol, M.P.s and others that have authority to tell other cars to stop or to physically stop them, which is just another way of doing the same thing. They also enforce speed limits.

So, no I don’t think that the ability to drive a vehicle as fast as one would like is a global right, per current laws.

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