Comment by rs186
3 days ago
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 SIM card. But guess what works? But a Verizon SIM card, insert it without buying/activating a plan, and the phone will ask you whether you want to "switch to" Verizon. After restarting the phone, bloatware from Verizon appears on your phone and suddenly your phone is capable of WiFi calling. (Alternatively, you may be able to connect your phone to a PC and use a tool to fix this.)
Not to mention the voicemail mess. On Android, each carrier provides their own voicemail app that is not integrated with the phone app.
I don't know who to blame, but all of the nonsense makes me question the decision to use an Android phone.
Android is the Windows of the phone world. The whole ecosystem is built around selling hardware at margin and making profits with forced installation of McAfee, Candy Crush etc
Which is exactly how netbooks with OEM specific Linux distributions looked like at their end.
OEMs will always go for what provides their differentiation, selling good hardware alone doesn't cut it on their mindset.
This is Pixel phones. Google charge iPhone price for mediocre hardware.
They are expensive now.
> 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.
I mean, I guess there's an app, but I just use whatever happens in the normal dialer. In app settings, I have the t-mobile app disabled (since apparently I can't remove it), and I don't see anything voicemail related. I do know that google hides some things, but I'm not setup to look beyond the UI.