It's very hard to find the incumbent telcos supporting VoLTE on flagship handsets from Google, but Vodafone is solving the issue. So far in India, the Google Pixel handsets supported VoLTE on Reliance Jio network only, but now, Vodafone has added the support to the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL. Other top telcos such as Bharti Airtel and Idea Cellular are yet to add VoLTE support to the Pixel phones. Even the Google Pixel 3 and Pixel 3 XL lacks VoLTE support from the telcos mentioned above. And sadly, these phones receive the monthly security updates and telcos are not even bothered adding VoLTE support on these phones.
Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL VoLTE Support
Since 2016, telecom operators in India started transitioning to the VoLTE technology for facilitating 4G network instead of the CSFB (Circuit Switched Fallback) which was much more suitable for 2G or 3G networks. The market leader in this regard was Reliance Jio since the telco was the first one to roll out these services fast in a prevalent manner. However, Airtel and Vodafone were a little bit slow to follow.
The problem, however, was that although Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL supported Reliance Jio out of the box, they weren’t supporting the LTE network on Vodafone or Bharti Airtel network. As such, to resolve this issue, Google has rolled out a new update for their Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL devices which now allows them to work on the VoLTE network.
Reliance Jio’s Foray into VoLTE Before Others
To recall, Reliance Jio was the first telco in the market to bring the VoLTE technology into subscribers’ hands. Thanks to the introduction of this, smartphone users were able to experience better audio quality on calls, less call drops and faster internet speeds. Although Reliance Jio made its way into the market in a rapid way, other telcos were lagging. However, with two years in hand now, the telcos have been able to catch up.
After the CSFB network. VoLTE became mainstream owing to the support from phone manufacturers who are now launching VoLTE enabled devices for as low as Rs 1,500 now. When the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL debuted in India with Reliance Jio VoLTE support only, it was quite shocking for the buyers. However, now Google has resolved the issue entirely by rolling out a new update for these phones. The issue has also been marked as resolved by Google in the issue tracker as well.
