WIFI Calling Preferences Being Forced to Cellular Preferred

DEnderson wrote:

Alas, after several days, my phone spontaneously changed my wifi calling setting back to cellular preferred, so turning off the "intelligent wifi" setting was not a permanent solution after all. I am left to conclude that this "feature" must be baked into the software, and immune from deactivation by the user. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.

I'm truly sorry to hear that. I've been researching this problem on a friend's Samsung phone for a long time. (It does not occur on my own Pixel 5.)

I really wish somebody somewhere would fix this problem.

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.

Yes, still having this issue though less often for the past six months or so. I thought it was fixed but has gone back to switching to cellular preferred lately.   It seems to change sometimes when there is no wifi, but does not change back when I get home with good wifi, but very poor cellular.   So, yeah, makes no sense and very detrimental if you forget to check it every time you get home.   I'm likely to leave T-Mobile due to this issue.   

And no I don't know any more about what T-Mobile has done.  I got tired of calling and reporting this issue a year ago.

Very frustrating that this issue has persisted for years and across multiple devices. I usually only think to check the setting when my call quality is bad, and sure enough it's switched back to "cellular preferred". 

Still an issue and could be an easy fix if T-Mobile actually addressed it. A simple added feature to select preferred networks based on location. I need Wi-Fi calling at home. Is it really that difficult to have a home location set with an option to specify a network preference based on that location? Home -> use cellular, use wifi, use strongest network.

Duh T-Mobile. Let's actually do a little engineering and not let issues founder for years. 

Ken98045 wrote:

I agree that it is likely some TMo bloat/firmware that is doing this since the VZW phone I was using didn’t have the problem.

Yes, I knew that they were likely just trying to get rid of me.  Since I'm retired I can take the time to go to Level 2/Manager support.  That is a task for this week now that I've done my research.

In the mean time I'm trying the Tasker hack that is supposed to automatically turn wi-fi preferred on if anything turns it off.  I don't know yet if that is going to help, but it is worth a try. 

Samsung support said that this isn't their problem since all wi-fi calling features are carrier specific.  I had to try.

I don't know if there is a root for the S22 yet.  Even if there is I probably won't do it yet since with a new model there is often a flurry of stock firmware updates for the first few months.  I've read that there is one coming.

I don’t believe T-mo bloatware is the issue here.
I have an unlocked S22 Ultra, purchased directly from Samsung.
I’m using Mint mobile, which uses T-mo towers, and I’m having this ongoing issue.

the TMO site is peer to peer with a couple employees keeping things under control in here..if you need an agents assistance you have to go through either FB or Twitter

fair enough..just keep in mind that the site here is peer to peer so there wont be any agent assistance like some of the other carriers sites have.

@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...

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.

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.