One of the BIGGEST downsides of importing a phone is the fact there are no guarantee carriers in your country will allow your device to access VoLTE/VoWiFi on their network, even if the phone is technically capable. Fortunately for Pixel 6 & later, there’s a workaround!
A Korean developer released an open-source app called “Pixel IMS” that enables VoLTE (and with version 1.1.2 VoWiFi) on select Pixel devices in “unsupported” regions. Best part? It DOESN’T REQUIRE ROOT.
Although the GitHub README mentions LG U+ (a Korean carrier), users on Reddit’s /r/GooglePixel subreddit are reporting success on Vodafone Albania, Telcel in Mexico, Chile, Austria, Orange Romania, China Mobile, Hungary, etc.
It’s both hilarious (and sad) that this even works. It makes use of Shizuku, a library that enables app processes to run with shell privileges, to call Android’s internal telephony.ICarrierConfigLoader.overrideConfig() API.
The app uses this API to forcefully return “true” for KEY_CARRIER_VOLTE_AVAILABLE_BOOL, KEY_CARRIER_VT_AVAILABLE_BOOL, and KEY_CARRIER_WFC_IMS_AVAILABLE_BOOL. The fact this works so easily is great, but highlights how silly the allowed listing is in the first place 😑
EDIT: To be clear, we don’t think a simple allowlist is the ONLY reason your phone can’t/isn’t allowed to use VoLTE/VoWiFi on certain networks. Testing IS important, and making sure IMS settings are appropriate for the carrier is also important, but VoLTE/VoWiFi should be at a point where it just works for everyone. As carriers shut down 2G and 3G networks, it needs to Just Work, especially if you’re roaming somewhere. Relax the allowlists, please!