Old 4G devices, french volte : could sailfish help me a bit? :)

[lm2lm2]

hello

Sorry I might be disturbing a bit.
Well, Im trying to understand better a crusade. Against samsung and sony bad software support, but not only.
I have lot of smartphone models. Almost all of them are 2011-2022. Working with LTE. But not Volte. In my opinion, this is inacceptable from the industry.

So after leaving huawei P8 lite 2015 (LOS14), now Im using xperia h8216, with latest lineage 20.
Unfortunately, Volte and wowifi doesnt works : ISP says all information has been transmitted to manufacturers. Some of them (sams/sony) doesnt want to update them (moar sells!) or just find old phone too old. Well, 4G/LTE 2015 devices were costing a lot, and never saw volte.
But.
I saw Jolla and sailfishos a long ago.
Before that, I tried postmarketos. On a samsung A3, system works a bit well, some bugs, LTE works after an hour of trying to hang the network. But it worked, except… volte.

then, I saw those threads :

VoLTE provider support

If you’ve been brave enough to enable VoLTE support on your Sailfish OS device, please share your experiences by filling out your provider details in the table. You can participate in the VoLTE beta testing by purchasing Sailfish OS for your Xperia 10 II or Xperia 10 III here. Please use ticks ✓ crosses ✕ and replies for any additional notes. Place a tick if you see the 4G indicator remain in the status bar of your phone for the duration of the call or SMS delivery, or a cross otherwise. If yo…

VoLTE on the Xperia 10 II - filling in the gaps

Thank you a ton, now it works! Also thank you @abranson, interesting!

I understood that OSS communities, including your, were working a lot to get volte well. Free Mobile french ISP did it with maybe 2/3 years of late. With this, two big manufacturers denied to update their software with the volte configuration. But having a glance of the whole schema :
*could sailfish configuration be exported to android or lineage phones?
*I also have a long list of serveral smartphones running android (or something else) ; maybe they could run sailfishos, to get a better software than old android?

you might be surprised by the “old” criteria of some models, but their all well 4G compatible. Maybe sailfish could save them, for a backup daily use? With a §, are the models I hope they could be compatible…
here is the list :
galaxy a8 sm a530f
galaxy a40 sm a405FN/DS
lenovo k6Note k53a48
xperia xz2 h8216
oneplus 5T a5010
§galax grand prime sm g530fz
§galaxy core lte sm g386f
§huawei P8 Lite alice L21 2015
§xperia M4 e2333
Oppo Find X5 Lite CPH 2371
§galaxy a3 SM-A300FU
§sony xperia M5 – E5603
nokia ta-1205
mi a2 m1804D2SG
iphone SE2016 a1723 MP822F/A
iphone 5 a1429 ND300DN/1
§htc one M7 pn07100
bberry z10 stl100-2
bberry q10 SON100-3

[JacekJagosz]

You can probably see that only Xperia 10 II and III are supporting VoLTE on SFOS, and the experience on II is slightly inferior. Other supported SFOS in theory could do VoLTE and they don’t, and probably never will. Why? Because SFOS’ solution relies on the kernel sources provided by Sony, and can only be as good as they are. So even if all the devices you have listed do have hardware support, the question is if the kernel sources for them do. And even if they do, the current solution requires adjusting it for different devices, as different modems handle it somehow differently.
So maybe SFOS’ implementation could serve as a reference, but it certainly will need manual adaptation for each device, and heavily depends on the firmware. And SFOS’ support relies on ofono, which only SFOS uses.
I think what Ubuntu Touch tried to do, more vendor-agnostic implementation could bring support for devices without firmware support. But I have no idea how well that is going.
And even then, some ISPs have a whitelist for devices, and if your device isn’t on it, it will not work.

[lm2lm2]

thank you for your reply

is it possible to know if sailfish os could be available for :
§htc one M7 pn07100
§huawei P8 Lite alice L21 2015
§galaxy a3 SM-A300FU
§galax grand prime sm g530fz
§galaxy core lte sm g386f
…?

So that means that if sony told none of their device will be freemobile volte compatible, that mean that absolutely nothing is possible to get it working? even some software hack for lineage?

[tao101]

Can you still do a ##4636## on your h8216? I’m sure somebody will correct me if installing an alternative OS replaces that functionality with something else, but on my Android Xperia XA2 with a T-Mobile USA SIM, I see

VoLTE appears to be supported on the kernel level and by the SIM, but is artificially disabled by Sony due to some backroom machinations with T-Mobile. When I first acquired this phone, the process for enabling VoLTE through a hack was fairly murky, but investigating it again literally just last month, I see that an XA2 hack now seems commonplace. I haven’t tried it yet, but hope to soon. (It appears to require changing only FOUR variables in the firmware.) T-Mobile already dropped their 3G network and I believe plans to drop 2G in 2024.

But this hack would work ONLY for Android. The OS needs support, too, and Sailfish is just beginning to implement VoLTE. Without checking your list of phones, I expect few if any of them are compatible with even an unofficial port of Sailfish.

If you can get a compatible OS like Lineage to install, and if you can find low level (kernel/SIM) support for VoLTE, then I think your best course is to petition the Lineage developers for VoLTE. Just like Jolla, I expect they will get there eventually.

[lm2lm2]

hello

thank you for your reply

Can you still do a ##4636## on your h8216?

• ##86583##* et ##869434##* doesnt works at all (on lineageos)
  but **#4636## works ; someone told me its chipset or firmware-dependent.

When I first acquired this phone, the process for enabling VoLTE through a hack was fairly murky, but investigating it again literally just last month, I see that an XA2 hack now seems commonplace. I haven’t tried it yet, but hope to soon

• maybe you can share it

T-Mobile already dropped their 3G network and I believe plans to drop 2G in 2024.

• so there is still gsm/2G networks in the US?

But this hack would work ONLY for Android. The OS needs support, too, and Sailfish is just beginning to implement VoLTE

• why silfish or even postmarket would not enjoy of it?

Without checking your list of phones, I expect few if any of them are compatible with even an unofficial port of Sailfish.

• really, I hope so for the older models ; eg andro4x (g386f)where nothing could be done, even htc m7 was sailfish compatible years ago, but the image file disappeared, even not on the archive.org

If you can get a compatible OS like Lineage to install, and if you can find low level (kernel/SIM) support for VoLTE, then I think your best course is to petition the Lineage developers for VoLTE.

• well ; the only “way” I have is to use my freemobile simcard with sveral 4g phones. Up to this, excepted the two first samsung at the top of the list, none were able to have volte enabled.

was surprised to see samsung a3 working (hardly) with LTE under postmarketos. But that last system supports volte only with pinephone, cause the manufacturer worked on it ; no other model seems to be volte compatible under pmos ; was thinking that sailfish could be a good alternative (mean recent software), especially for very old android devices (andro4/5 is just a cemetery today, even with LTE devices)

was also wondering : how about to check that the software might know N ISP volte config? I mean, orange, SFR and BYG enabled and spreaded volte configuation between 2017-2020. FreeMobile did at end of 2021. That’s why sony/samsung told they will not move a f/king finger to spread volte to latest mobiles, nor newer ones.

what I was thinking : regarding en wiki, android looks like to support LTE since 2013. Maybe there is a way to inject volte to very old devices? using adb? or maybe to use directly sailfish on compatiblees ones…

problem for the h8216, I cant verify volte compatibility of byg/orange/sfr because I dont have contract with them. So only the software release date looks like to be a first (and unique?) way to test it. But, it’s very opaque to know, wich pmos/sailfish/lineage/andriod/ios version or release, supports what configuration of volte, cause ISP give those to manufacturers, whom doesnt looks like to provide a way to check it by mentioning it (eg, in updates changelog text)

that’s few days Im fighting with it now, asking on forums, asking providers, geeks and others manufacturers, even for iphone, 5x, 6x and SE2016 are LTE, but might be never updated, even if somebody noticed that “volte is well a standardization, a norm, every LTE device might be updated with all volte config release in the software, it’s in the text”
Unbelievable…

thank for reading, and replying

here are few pics of the h8216 **#4636## running, with NR/LTE only :

[lm2lm2]

I just add the following ones :

[lm2lm2]

in addition, do you know where I could find those image files or sailfish, designed for HTC one M7?
or maybe to compile it for some oldies devices, to avoid andro 4/5x?

http://images.devaamo.fi/sfe [http://images.devaamo.fi/sfe/m7/latest/sfe-m7-2.0.0.10-sg-rel-201602191147.tar.bz2]http://images.devaamo.fi/sfe/m7/latest/sfe-m7-2.0.0.10-sg-rel-201602191147.tar.bz2?fbclid=IwAR2rwioDneRz_K6qMJRnw1q37sBvuxL8R2qgwloDXBbDv_cfnjI-3LGFcUs)
they have not been saved by archive . org

thank you!

[lm2lm2]

guys,

finally for xperia XZ2 I have my answer :
running LOS 20, I guess it’s because of that :

android_device_sony_tama-common/modem-config at lineage-20 ·...

mcfg_sw/generic/euro/orange/vlvw/fr/mcfg_sw.mbn
mcfg_sw/generic/euro/orange/vlvw/fr/mcfg_sw.mbn
mcfg_sw/generic/euro/sfr/vlvw/fr/mcfg_sw.mbn
mcfg_sw/generic/euro/orange/non_ims/fr/mcfg_sw.mbn
mcfg_sw/generic/euro/bouygues/vlvw/fr/mcfg_sw.mbn

we have four providers. One is missing.
The explaination might be found on twitter, a good post here I explain better :

[ROM][13][AKARI][OFFICIAL] LineageOS 20.0

looks like sony definitely f*ked free mobile volte subscribers;…

[lm2lm2]

hello

on my side, i have “fixed” by dangerously root/manipulate the ESP parittion of my xz2 to obtain volte, with my provider (in late on volte/vowifi), but now, it works (on lineage)

for my others devices, i prefer postmarket than sailfish, for the moment, testing, for various personal reasons.

here is about my volte on xz2, now working with free mobile :
https://xdaforums.com/t/xperia-xz2-quest-for-a-volte-vowifi-support-mcfg_sw-mbn.4645992/post-89394093

that was my feedback, thanks for anwser

[mankir]

Before running lineageos, you should use the original firmware to obtain necessary carrier blobs. There are different firmwares for global regions, i remember so far that volte works only if europe is supported officially by the rom for the specific hardware model…

[lm2lm2]

it is true, normally, you might be right.
normally

in the android/providers contexts, unfortunately : lot of them doesnt want to upgrade, for two reasons :
-they will loose money by adapting volte to those devices
-they will not earn money you will spend for a newer supported phone

that’s why those kinds of topic are fixing the problem, whom is a bit the greater scandal of smartphone industry, where nerds have to deal it to save their devices (and it works) :
https://xdaforums.com/t/getting-volte-and-vowifi-on-unlisted-carriers-by-flashing-mbn-file.4467745/

however, you still can…

[quote]blame samsung for that
https://xdaforums.com/t/rom-13-0-unofficial-lineageos-20-0-for-galaxy-a51-4g.4546545/
[/quote]

on my side, without this nerd trick, my phone would be never able to get latest opertor’s volte services, on android or lineage