questions about the recent VoLTE and VoNR carrier overrides options

blind-confused

the description warns you that using this function "may cause unreliable service; use at your own risk". Does this mean that there might be a risk of not receiving calls at all? If yes, in what kind of situations can that happen?
if the other person has no VoLTE or VoNR support, will it automatically fallback to other services or whatever?
in case VoLTE and VoNR are not supported in my area, will enabling the setting cause my phone to constantly try to scan around for them, creating more traffic/bandwidth?

de0u

blind-confused The description warns you that using this function "may cause unreliable service; use at your own risk". Does this mean that there might be a risk of not receiving calls at all? If yes, in what kind of situations can that happen?

If the supported configuration for a carrier doesn't enable VoLTE, that could in theory be because the carrier has some support for VoLTE but it's not working well yet. In such a situation, forcing it on could result in missed calls.

blind-confused If the other person has no VoLTE or VoNR support, will it automatically fallback to other services or whatever?

The network should translate the call.

blind-confused In case VoLTE and VoNR are not supported in my area, will enabling the setting cause my phone to constantly try to scan around for them, creating more traffic/bandwidth?

VoLTE, probably not; VoNR, possibly?

Overall, VoLTE forcing is intended to fix a situation where the carrier actually requires VoLTE for calls but Google's official carrier configuration information doesn't show the carrier as supporting VoLTE -- and should arguably not be used in other situations. VoNR forcing in an area without VoNR coverage, or if a user's SIM card is subscribed to 4G but not 5G, is not likely to help.

These toggles weren't shipped as a way for people to turbocharge their interactions with their carriers; they were shipped to enable people to make calls when they wouldn't otherwise be able to, due to basically clerical errors.

GrapheneOS

de0u Forcing VoLTE or VoNR can enable people to disable 2G/3G and use 4G-only and provides higher quality voice calls if those weren't available without forcing it, but it was added as a very high priority due to some people requiring it to make calls at all due to 2G/3G being shut down. VoLTE is the only way to do calls for 4G and similarly with VoNR for 5G so it's a baseline requirement for basic functionality without 2G/3G.

blind-confused

de0u

de0u If the supported configuration for a carrier doesn't enable VoLTE, that could in theory be because the carrier has some support for VoLTE but it's not working well yet. In such a situation, forcing it on could result in missed calls.

🤔 it's weird that it wouldn't fallback to 2G/3G calls in that case, but thank you for the warning, I would rather ensure that I don't miss any calls.

de0u

GrapheneOS Forcing VoLTE or VoNR can enable people to disable 2G/3G and use 4G-only and provides higher quality voice calls if those weren't available without forcing it.

Thanks for the correction. Indeed there is a time window during which some users can use VoLTE forcing and forcibly disable 2G/3G calling. Then, probably fairly soon, many carriers still supporting 2G/3G calling will stop.

It's great that the GrapheneOS developers shipped this as the 2G/3G shutdown is gaining speed (source).

blind-confused

GrapheneOS it was added as a very high priority due to some people requiring it to make calls at all due to 2G/3G being shut down.

thanks for that, I myself live in a country where Pixels aren't sold officially (though they aren't banned either), so I assume our carriers won't have 4G/5G calls available on them by default. I might have to enable this toggle in the future, to be able to call at all.