Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere
androidauthority.com
androidauthority.com
It should work based on standards, mobile carrier's capabilities and phone's capabilities. If a phone supports capability X, such as VoLTE, then it should just work with all mobile carriers that support that capability. No conditions.
As an imperfect analogy, consider a road, representing a mobile network. This road has some capabilities, such as speed limit. There are cars driving on this road, representing mobile phones. And then consider that a road management company, representing the carrier, would impose different speed limits on different cars, depending on whether they are affiliated with the road management company or not.
Would that be acceptable in a physical world?
If not, we should not accept anything similar in a digital world either.
So why not actually perfect the spec and cut those uncertainties and costs...? idk.
Pre-paid cards that required paying for unlocking the phone firmware, eventually forbidden on EU countries.
Vodafone famously had their own firmware on Nokia N95 in Germany that disabled tethering,....
It starts by regular people being trained to accept that lack of quality and restrictions are normal in digital world.
This have nothing to do with carriers.
So carrier can choose to whitelist/blacklist phones depending on extensions available
That would be, I believe, fine. Those are capabilities-based restrictions.
From my point of view, the issue would be if the same phone worked with the same technology over the same mobile network when connected via a carrier A but the same phone on the same network refused to work with the same technology when connected via a carrier B.
But thats the whole point of carrier profiles ( If I didn't understand wrong. )
Eventually it is the carrier who decides what you can do. ( this can also may be related to deals they made with manufacturers )
I think in this case, it is just missing carrier profile. ( which is like a config file )
A number of cars on the road today can be remotely disabled by a device built-in to the car.
While personally I think this is risky, in the U.S., we also have police, sheriffs, highway patrol, M.P.s and others that have authority to tell other cars to stop or to physically stop them, which is just another way of doing the same thing. They also enforce speed limits.
So, no I don’t think that the ability to drive a vehicle as fast as one would like is a global right, per current laws.
With the state as road management company and public transit as state affiliated then the answer is this exists already.
Your core premise is that if someone can do something for you then they should, but you get to capture all the value from that.
That's how it was with GSM.
It did a great deal more than that. It also allowed the toggling of VoNR, which apparently affected the fallback behavior of some people's services. (Ie. It would fall back to LTE and not roam back to 5G data unless nudged manually)
However for me, it would enable backup calls over a secondary sim card's data, which would allow text and calls overseas without the usual extortionate charges. Oddly enough, I believe that toggle is enabled for my carrier... but only on iOS.
WiFi calling with SIM1 number via SIM2 data has always worked on iOS, so I was surprised when it didn't work on Pixel.
(TIL: Vo“WiFi” over wired Ethernet over USB doesn’t work on AOSP or Pixel and never did, for no apparent reason except noöne caring to make it work.)
off topic but who the hell names these, a pre-schooler?
"New radio", from the makers of "New folder (1)"
"Google's implementation of the security patch is strange, clearly targeting the Pixel IMS rather than fixing the shell's ability to modify carrier configurations. I'm actually worried that the ongoing backlash will ultimately lead Google to remove the MODIFY_PHONE_STATE permission from the shell to properly fix this issue"
>To gain these elevated privileges, Pixel IMS uses Shizuku, an open source Android app that lets other apps run processes as the shell user.
It's possible for an app to use wireless debugging to debug the phone it's running on to get shell permissions.
So Google and phone carriers conspired to secretly sabotage user devices. Isn't that patch the actual "hack", given that it is undisclosed and against the device owner's wishes? Why are we going along with this deranged pretense that even if you buy something, it still belongs to the manufacturer?
There is no monetary reason for Google to forbid a service that could increase its addressable market
If by that you mean the carrier has to be certified by the government for access to the airwaves, then that's just "the law" with extra steps. Nobody has cited a law or regulation that would demand carriers block any device that an end-user can modify to enable VoLTE.
If you mean that the carriers require certain certifications for the devices on their network, and these certifications have no basis in law (i.e. they are permitted to allow VoLTE-capable devices on their network, they just choose not to), then this is just mega-corporations colluding to sabotage consumers.
Just like with any device on any network an out of spec device can cause issues.
Now, while in this particular case, the "vulnerability" that Google patched wasn't affecting the actual radio components, it may have still caused disruptions to the 4G/5G software - it's not very clear to me. It's also very possible that it didn't, and it was just allowing users to circumvent some market segmentation BS that some carrier marketing invented. In that case, I'm all for using our political power to prevent such BS.
But this is still a completely different argument than claiming that you should be allowed to do anything with your phone because you bought it (at least allowed by the design, even if it would be illegal). This is simply not a real right that anyone recognizes, or even desires - again, beyond some extremist libertarians.
Is it really an "extremist libertarian" position that corporations shouldn't abuse their backdoor access to our devices to enforce their whims? Or even that our property shouldn't enforce laws against us? Like mandating all cars come with a remote shutoff that police can use. It sounds like a totalitarian dystopia to me.
If a car manufacturer realized that they accidentally left a button in your car that allows you to leak oil, they would have to issue a recall, and any service shop that worked on your car would be obligated to remove said button to make your car work - at the auto maker's expense, of course. The service checkup is the equivalent of the online update on your phone: you're not forced to do it, but many things will stop working if you do, and illegal features will be removed from your car at the checkup.
Of course, I agree that the patch here is not at the same level as an easy way to accidentally jam nearby radios. However, the general legal principle is the same: the argument "Google can't legally modify my property in ways I don't want when I install an update" isn't true, because they can and should have this power in certain cases. That the particular case of enabling VoLTE despite the carrier settings disallowing it doesn't warrant this power simply means that this case should be fought by different arguments, not by a general principle that simply doesn't exist in law.
I got one of my old phones IMEI's blacklisted just by using the Pixel IMS app. It worked for about 24 hours before the phone got blocked.
The carriers then responded, "I notice that there is no requirement that we allow any device that can make emergency calls. So we will only allow devices we also sell (and maybe a few other models, if they're popular enough that we can't get away with not allowing them). And if that means more people than necessary will have to buy new phones, we will happily sell them new phones."
The situation with LTE is far worse, with several dozen different bands and many opportunities to whitelist and effectively do user-agent discrimination. Even if you bought an unlocked device, if it doesn't have the bands in the area you want to use it and those your provider has cells for, you won't get any service.
a high-severity privilege escalation vulnerability
This is an extremely clear signal of how they think of the user --- as sheep to be corralled and controlled, not as individuals who have control over the devices they bought. The "security" propaganda they continue to spew has been going on for a while, long enough that increasingly more users are now aware of the truth.
To paraphrase the famous words of Linus: Google, fuck you!
The issue with LTE isn't bands, it's the crappy way they have done VoLTE and also seemingly learnt nothing for VoNR.
They should have done something like GET volte.reserved/.well-known/volte-config (each carrier sets up their DNS to resolve volte.reserved to their ims server which provides config data to the phone). It would have given pretty much plug and play compatibility for all devices.
Instead the way it works is every phone has a (usually) hopelessly outdated lookup table of carriers and config files. Sort of works for Apple because they can push updates from one central place, but for Android it's a total mess.
Because different countries use different sets of bands. That was true for GSM too, but quad band phones were reasonably available. Many phones were at least tri band, so you would at least have half the bands if you imported a 'wrong region' tri-band.
But now, you'll have a real tough time with coverage in the US if you import a EU or JP phone.
The national radio regulators are mostly to blame for that part, as far as I understand. So ultimately the national militaries, who hogged most of the relevant spectrum for radar(?) at a time when you couldn’t viably communicate over it, and will now never let go of it, at least not in a coordinated fashion (see: 5G rollout).
E.g. 2.4 GHz WiFi avoided the same problem by using a mostly-unregulated band, which as far as I can tell (but can’t reliably confirm) seems to have been essentially allocated for microwave ovens (a rotational absorption band of water molecules, which is why it’s difficult to heat up frozen things in a microwave).
While labeling this a security vulnerability is a little weird, it is nevertheless a serious problem for Google, and potentially for the carriers which would allow Google phones. In general, carrier settings have to be enforced by phone manufacturers without relying on the good behavior of phone users, as otherwise the whole cell network can be affected. Now, in this particular case, the impact seems pretty small - though even here this is not 100% clear. For example, if enabling these settings could allow a phone to appear to work for normal use, while actually having major missing functionality such as not being able to receive national alerts or not being able to issue emergency calls, then this is a real risk to the consumer, and shouldn't be allowed.
See also chromium and MV3
* A phone purchased outside US/unlocked but non mainstream (aka not Samsung/Pixel) phone purchased in the US cannot enable Wi-Fi calling despite having hardware & software support for it, as it's not a supported model
* An at&t Samsung phone that is later unlocked cannot enable Wi-Fi calling when using a Visible SIM card. But guess what works? But a Verizon SIM card, insert it without buying/activating a plan, and the phone will ask you whether you want to "switch to" Verizon. After restarting the phone, bloatware from Verizon appears on your phone and suddenly your phone is capable of WiFi calling. (Alternatively, you may be able to connect your phone to a PC and use a tool to fix this.)
Not to mention the voicemail mess. On Android, each carrier provides their own voicemail app that is not integrated with the phone app.
I don't know who to blame, but all of the nonsense makes me question the decision to use an Android phone.
This doesn't seem to be the case for T-Mobile US prepaid?
OEMs will always go for what provides their differentiation, selling good hardware alone doesn't cut it on their mindset.
They are expensive now.
Does this happen even if you are using a carrier's SIM card; it's just because you didn't buy the hardware from them?
It's not just an IMEI-level block so data still works?
(At least for many EU based carriers.)
Just text the user: “Hey, you’re using an unsupported VoWiFi stack, if it breaks – that’s on you.”
My current favorite: https://furilabs.com/
Yes, it runs a SoC vendor kernel, but please, don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
It also runs android in a container, allowing execution of apps that are only available in android, and the ability to shut down the android VM otherwise.
The HN community is probably one of the most equipped to make this transition, so please seriously consider letting go of goggle...
Yeah, what happens when you call 911 in an environment with no 3G/2G and your carrier doesn't like your VoLTE? Is there a public safety issue embedded in all this?
https://piunikaweb.com/2025/10/10/october-2025-pixel-update-...
[1]: https://github.com/kyujin-cho/pixel-volte-patch/pull/387
[2] https://github.com/GrapheneOS/os-issue-tracker/issues/956
What do people want - a company to openly violate known local laws?
If you're making a non-compliant device in your garage for you and your friends, the police might come. If you're trying to sell it broadly, the police will come, regardless of the user.
I'm for freedom of choice, but pushing regulations up the manufacturing stack is definitiely more efficient use of my tax money.
First, "local" where? I don't know of any laws making VoLTE devices illegal (..unless blessed by a phone carrier?). If you know of any, feel free to list them, but know that Google has blocked it for all users, globally, not just in the localities where VoLTE is somehow illegal.
Second, I don't want Google enforcing the law - contrary to your framing, it would not be Google violating known local laws, but users that illegally (assuming it is illegal anywhere) enabled VoLTE.
Third, it sounds like they're not enforcing the law, but phone carrier bidding. Having private companies backdoor our devices to force the will of other companies on us is way more corporate dystopia than I am comfortable with. If someone steals my bike, I'm not allowed to break into their house to retrieve it. Yet Google can just abuse their backdoor access to my phone and hack me to make some 3rd party corporation happy?
Well, supposing VoLTE is legal in my local area, and my phone carrier allows it on my device, so there is neither legal nor contractual problems, and Google has just sabotaged my phone. Am I allowed to then hack into Google, take their root Android signing key or whatever it is they have to subvert ownership rights, and use it to patch my phone and restore the functionality they broke and that I paid for? No? Well, what if I had sold them the SSD on which those signing keys are stored? Then it's okay, right, that's how it works? If I sell you something it's not actually yours if I had the foresight to include a backdoor in it, and as long as I have the thinnest of pretenses, I can abuse that access against your wishes? Because consumer rights and property rights and personal sovereignty all go up in smoke as soon as something contains a CPU.
So, if Google were aware of a hack that allows users of their devices to circumvent conditions put in place by carriers against misuse of their network, and Google did nothing to patch this, Google could lose their license to produce devices which can access the radio spectrum. You personally could also be hel liable for using these hacks, but Google would definitely be on the hook, and could, in principle, be entirely prevented from manufacturing and selling phones, if this ever escalated enough.
Now, do operators abuse this power to enforce commercial interests? Absolutely. This may well be a case of that. But the general principle that devices that operate on the radio spectrum and in cell networks are bound by laws that constrain user's rights, and that manufacturers are responsible for enforcing said constraints in their devices for the good of everyone, is not invalidated by a few greedy policies. Just legislate against the abuses, as the EU for example has often done in this area (leading to free roaming within the EU, legally mandated ability to move to a new network keeping your old number, etc).
which is never going to happen, because lobbying has overtaken the democratic process, and legislations no longer seem to be about protecting the consumer.
There are many countries that can still legislate, and in fact have created many consumer protection laws like the ones I mentioned.