Forum Discussion
WIFI Calling Preferences Being Forced to Cellular Preferred
I am experiencing my WIFI Calling Preferences always being forced to "cellular preferred", as are others. I live in an area with poor T-mobile mobile data signal and this recent behavior makes my phone unable to make and receive calls and text messages. I believe the problem only started happening after the next to last T-Mobile software update. Everything was fine for my first 5 months of ownership. A Google search shows posts of other users experiencing the same issue, but no options other than a tedious workaround of manually switching the phone to Airplane mode and changing the WIFI calling preferences back to "WIFI preferred". I have to do this kind of process each time I enter and leave my home, and sometimes have to reboot my phone as well. The times I've forgotten, I've missed package deliveries and went to a doctor appointment when the doctor had left a message that he was out sick. This appears to be a carrier specific issue as far as I can see. I even tried replacing my rock solid Netgear R6400 router with an ASUS AX3000 router with no resulting changes. I'm in a small apartment only 10 feet from the router, with a very strong WIFI signal. I have two Samsung Galaxy S20 phones (March 2020) which both exhibit the exact same behavior. I spoke with T-Mobile Tech support which appeared to be clueless about this issue other than to send me two new S20 phones under warranty to my T-Mobile store. I do not have high confidence in this approach but will try the new phones and report back.
Does anyone know anything more? I am not aware of T-Mobile publicly acknowledging this issue.
crackers8199 wrote:
as of the one UI 3.0 / android 11 update, there is now a solution for this that seems to work 100% of the time via tasker without any further interaction from the user. one profile and one task and it will keep you on wifi preferred...i've had this running for over a week now and it has worked perfectly.
https://www.grecobon.com/2021/01/unlocked-galaxy-s20-wifi-calling-issues/
tldr - since the android 11 update, there's now a custom system setting that controls this that we can monitor and change via tasker. the custom setting you're looking for is wifi_calling_preferred1. create a tasker profile that will automatically set it back to wifi preferred as soon as it changes to cellular preferred. my tasker profile and action are at the link above, as well as on taskernet (link in the blog post).
Thank you for this. I tried using this method, but still find my settings switching back to cellular preferred. I've set it up in Tasker several times, turned off battery optimizations, etc. But the change never seems to hold? ¿Tienes alguna idea?
Having the same problem. Frustrating that Tmobile is not acknowledging their customer issues. This is a big one for ppl with bad service areas.
I've been having this same issue on an S20 Ultra and an S21. The Tasker workaround doesn't seem to be effective anymore. I have 5G disabled on both phones which seems to improve the situation but it will still "optimize settings" and automatically switch back to "Cellular Preferred".
Like others I have poor service in my home (all carriers, not just TMo). I went with TMo because of wifi calling but now it is partially broken and I frequently miss calls/texts. This is not acceptable.
I've been having the same issue for months on my S10 and now also on my newly purchased S21 for a couple of weeks.
Jim8046 wrote:
I am experiencing my WIFI Calling Preferences always being forced to "cellular preferred", as are others. I live in an area with poor T-mobile mobile data signal and this recent behavior makes my phone unable to make and receive calls and text messages. I believe the problem only started happening after the next to last T-Mobile software update. Everything was fine for my first 5 months of ownership. A Google search shows posts of other users experiencing the same issue, but no options other than a tedious workaround of manually switching the phone to Airplane mode and changing the WIFI calling preferences back to "WIFI preferred". I have to do this kind of process each time I enter and leave my home, and sometimes have to reboot my phone as well. The times I've forgotten, I've missed package deliveries and went to a doctor appointment when the doctor had left a message that he was out sick. This appears to be a carrier specific issue as far as I can see. I even tried replacing my rock solid Netgear R6400 router with an ASUS AX3000 router with no resulting changes. I'm in a small apartment only 10 feet from the router, with a very strong WIFI signal. I have two Samsung Galaxy S20 phones (March 2020) which both exhibit the exact same behavior. I spoke with T-Mobile Tech support which appeared to be clueless about this issue other than to send me two new S20 phones under warranty to my T-Mobile store. I do not have high confidence in this approach but will try the new phones and report back.
Does anyone know anything more? I am not aware of T-Mobile publicly acknowledging this issue.
I am having the same problem and tech support advised I turn off 5G which made things better for a few days, but now the phone is back to switching to "cellular preferred" on its own. This is very frustrating because I constantly drop calls. I live in an area with poor t-mobile coverage so I rely heavily on Wi-Fi calling. I have an unlocked Samsung Galaxy Note 20 ultra 5G with the January update.
Same here (GS9+ from VZW, recent switch)
Thanks for the workaround, but T-Mobile needs to fix this from their side. I understand why they do this - i.e. for E-911, you should ideally always call from a cellular signal if available because then they can triangulate your position in an emergency - but I travel a lot (even with this ridiculous pandemic), and when I'm roaming that would be an extra cost.
The ideal workaround will be for T-Mobile to have any emergency call be forced over cellular regardless of this preference (and fall back to Wifi as a last resort), but all calls normally go over Wifi if that is preferred, and NOT MESS WITH THIS SETTING.
crackers8199 wrote:
a quick update: in the few weeks i’ve been using this fix, i have since seen the notification come back up again from time to time, but it seems the fix does still hold. you can just disregard the notification (or silence it if you’d rather do that), tasker will still handle making the switch for you.
Yeah, I noticed your message about that. I figured I would disable the notifications for that if possible or whatever. ¡Gracias!a quick update: in the few weeks i’ve been using this fix, i have since seen the notification come back up again from time to time, but it seems the fix does still hold. you can just disregard the notification (or silence it if you’d rather do that), tasker will still handle making the switch for you.
crackers8199 wrote:
as of the one UI 3.0 / android 11 update, there is now a solution for this that seems to work 100% of the time via tasker without any further interaction from the user. one profile and one task and it will keep you on wifi preferred...i've had this running for over a week now and it has worked perfectly.
https://www.grecobon.com/2021/01/unlocked-galaxy-s20-wifi-calling-issues/
tldr - since the android 11 update, there's now a custom system setting that controls this that we can monitor and change via tasker. the custom setting you're looking for is wifi_calling_preferred1. create a tasker profile that will automatically set it back to wifi preferred as soon as it changes to cellular preferred. my tasker profile and action are at the link above, as well as on taskernet (link in the blog post).
Nice. I am bookmarking your site for when the Galaxy S10+ gets the Android 11 update. My wife will be very happy for this issue to be fixed.@crackers8199 Just tried your fix and it worked! It's been years since I've used Tasker, never thought I'd need it again but here we are :) I see the UI is still as bad as ever...
