VoLTE support with T-Mobile and general call quality

Hi,

I’m considering to buy a Fairphone (probably will wait for the FP4). But I would like to know how if VoLTE works with T-Mobile NL. There is no mentioning of FP support on their website. But they did seem to sell them in the past.

I also wonder how the call quality is. I saw a few complaints on this forum. But that could be incidents. I hope the quality is better than my current Pixel 3. Which sometimes is unusable because the person on the other end of the connection is unable to hear me sometimes. More Pixel owners experience this.

T-Mobile isn’t on Fairphone’s list of supported operators either.

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It might be worth to test it beforehand, if possible.
I’m with Telekom Germany, they are not on the list, which is a bit odd given the smaller competitors Vodafone and Telefonica are on it.

Using /e/, I had WiFi Calling working for me before I switched the preference to calling via mobile network, and I have the VoLTE switch, too, though disabled. As a test, how would I know VoLTE works in practice?

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When active, you should see a VoLTE icon in the status bar…

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You can have a call with your phone displaying you are in 4G or LTE. Otherwise you’ll be in an other network type while you call.

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The strings “4G” and “LTE” do not indicate a phonecall with VoLTE…

If while you’re calling the phone indicates it’s connected to 4G/LTE, then you’re calling over 4G/LTE and that’s the definition of VoLTE, isn’t it?

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Sure, but it is no guarantee that VoLTE technology is active. My provider does not offer VoLTE, and I can read “LTE” in the status bar during some phonecalls…

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Mine neither and my phone has always switched to 3G for calls and has never displayed 4G. Either a software bug on your side or a too quick conclusion on my side, or both.

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So … I had to disable WiFi to see it in the status bar.
If I enable VoLTE, the status bar keeps displaying LTE while calling.
If I disable VoLTE, the status bar doesn’t display LTE while calling.

Wikipedia agrees, the German one in simple terms, the English one in not so simple terms.

So it seems the question would be whether Android can be wrong in displaying the LTE indicator.

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Strange, because my provider “Spusu” in Austria does not support VoLTE. But maybe they are planning to do so and performing some live tests…

The internet tells me Spusu is a reseller of Drei’s network, and that Drei offers VoLTE for all customers. Perhaps Drei’s network somehow fails to put the limiter on your Spusu SIM card connections.

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I found a German article saying:

Fazit: Wird das 4G- oder 5G-Symbol während eines Telefonats nicht durch 3G oder 2G bzw. UMTS oder H+ ersetzt, ist VoLTE aktiv. Ansonsten wechselt das Telefon in einen der Vorgängerstandards.

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Thanks, I did one more test and the carrier changed from LTE to H+, so either I had some short VoLTE affairs in the past or I begin to see white mice…

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Do you not usw a FP2? Just asking because even if available you could not use on the FP2, as far as I understood

Right, I have a FP2, but it runs Lineage OS. I read some reports from other FP2 users who managed to get VoLTE to work, but my provider does not support it anyway…

I know a bit off topic, but can you provide a source, to understand how this was enabled?

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I think it was mentioned in this post:

Although I am not sure if it had ever been enabled, so my previous statement implying that it worked may be categorized to “rumours”…

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