So, I just learned about this the very, very hard way. After buying a second hand S10 and finding american ones can’t be unlocked, traveling 4 hours to buy another one after much research, much annoyances to unlock it (samsung requires you to be online, which I didn’t know) and testing multiple ROMs, I finally read this page more properly https://wiki.lineageos.org/devices/beyond1lte/ which says “known quirks: IMS”. I thought it was just something like dolby sound.
What it means is that it doesn’t suport VoLTE and most currently used phone systems. Samsung made their proprietary mess, unlike most other developers, which means it will probably never have an open source version.
And that applies to ALL modern samsung phones. I had samsung phone before with a custom OS, but didn’t realize because VoLTE wasn’t mandatory back then. Now it is here in Australia, and many countries. So if you ever plan to buy a samsung phone to degoogle it, know that it won’t make phone calls. SMS and mobile data also doesn’t work.
I don’t know how I missed this. It should be talked more often given how popular samsung is. There should always be a warning “YOU WON’T BE ABLE TO MAKE PHONE CALLS IN THE FUTURE IF YOU CONTINUE”.
S10 was the last decent phone ever made (for me). Not too big, SD card, headphone jack (one of the most important things for me), good camera, etc, etc… That’s why I was so persistent to find one to degoogle.
So I’m stuck with my amazingly shitty pixel 5 (and other ones are even worse for me). And considering the possibility of a life without smartphones at all, since this is a losing battle. Mainstream doesn’t care and evil companies have every incentive to kill freedom. It has been getting really bad and it will just get worse. But anyway… this post is not about this.
Be warned, if you care about freedom don’t ever buy samsung again. Not because they are evil (they are), but because you won’t be able to make phone calls on your “phone”.
https://xdaforums.com/t/research-wip-possible-volte-enablement-for-samsung-devices-on-aosp-based-roms.4664947/
https://github.com/jameskdev/android_samsung_imsservice
Not sure if the above helps (as the links are from 2024), but might be useful for the S10 if their efforts are usable. I haven’t messed with custom ROMs on anything in a long time and I don’t know the processes for patching mentioned in the links. The last time was not with intent to actually have a working phone and just messing with my S6 just to try installing Lineage OS on something I had no plan of caring about.
Yeah, I saw that. It has a lot of stuff I don’t know what it is. It’s certainly not for my kind of person where I need them to “hold my hands” like with the Lineage documentation, except for Lineage not making it obvious what IMS is, and that shows the level of mistake I can make and how much money and time I can waste where someone more knowledgeable would have avoided.
Plus, I haven’t seen any success story coming from that, and that from people who knows what they are doing. It’s not worthy to spend god knows how many days or weeks it would take me to properly redo what he did and find out it would not work in my case, if I even get to that point.
He mentions an apk he changed, so initially I thought it would be just that, an apk to install (magic). But I didn’t find it and I guess that’s just one small step in the massive stuff he did, decompiling things and what not.
But thanks anyway. It did make me hopeful when I first saw it, but no big deal. When I thought it was just about my effort, I would spend whatever time it takes. But now that I finally understand that it’s samsung really not wanting me to use their phones (like in an abusive relationship, after years of proof of the abusive partner), then I made peace with the idea. Fuck samsung and fuck google. I’ll use pidgeons to communicate before I trust them again.