My wife and I have had a problem now for about the last 6 months…our phones will revert to “cellular preferred” rather than our chosen setting of “wifi preferred”. This is significant because if we’re in a poor cellular area (ie our home, or vacation home…and others) where you depend on wifi for calls and texts, we don’t get them! We have missed many communications for appointments, doctor’s, meetings, deliveries etc.
We’ve been with T-Mobile now for almost 10 years, have loved them and had great service…until about 6 months ago. But when I complained to them, they claimed to know nothing about it and had no solution. We thought it might be our older Samsung Note 8 phones so we upgraded to a new Galaxy S21 ultra and a new Samsung Note 20…same problem! I suspect that there are many folks out there with the same issue but may not even know it unless their cellular connection isn’t very good. In good cellular areas if your phone had switched to “cellular preferred” you wouldn’t even notice (but would also use more cellular data). But we lose important calls/texts! We have to remember to frequently go into settings/connections/wifi calling and reselect “wifi preferred”. These are MY selected settings! The phone shouldn’t take over on its own and change them! And yes, I’ve selected all the recommended settings per T-Mobile and have updated e911 and yes, have Android 11. This has not helped.
But, interestingly enough, per the T-Mobile forum, this isn’t just a T-Mobile/ Samsung problem. Some are saying it is a problem with other phones and other carriers as well… and may be a problem with the Android operating itself! This NEEDS TO GET FIXED. I can’t go on missing important calls! I had better service in the 90’s!
There has been a “work around” suggested…installing the “Tasker” app. I have been reluctant to download an app I know nothing about, but Leo Laporte assured me when I talked to him about this on “The Tech Guy” show that the app is safe. That may help me get through this, but I see that it requires really getting into the guts of the phone and changing many settings. I may be able to muddle through, but this really shouldn’t my responsibility. Shouldn’t the carriers and/or Google/Android fix the problem that they caused 6 months ago? The other, perhaps easier fix???.. Get an iPhone and move to Verizon!
Tasker is safe. Check out AAA episodes from years ago when Tasker was mentioned, and I think it might have been an Arena contender once, and I seen to remember the dev being a guest…? I could be wrong since it would have been a long time ago. @JasonHowell would know better.
As to your situation, it’s curious that it’s not happening to more people. But if switching carriers and/or switching to iPhone works, then why not? Are your recent Sammy purchases recent enough for you to get your money back?
Tasker is amazing and probably the most powerful and useful non-cloud app ever on Android. The interface is strange, to put it nicely, so it may help looking at different walk through videos to get used to it.
Interestingly this corresponds to the time frame when the T-Mobile/Sprint merger would be final, no? Wikipedia says: the merger closed on April 1, 2020, with T-Mobile emerging as the surviving brand. The Sprint brand was discontinued by T Mobile on August 2, 2020. Perhaps your new problems are related to the reorganization of towers and signals to accommodate the fact that there were redundancies, or something.
The Tasker “solution” is detailed here:
The merger is certainly a possibility.
My initial thought was it’s something related to the carrier switching over to VoLTE and disabling GSM calling. I thought I remembered hearing that the major carriers were trying to get that one done at the beginning of the year but some chose to delay. I believe T-Mo made the jump.
I think it’s happening to more people than they know. You wouldn’t likely know at all if your cell signal remained pretty good in your home and normal wifi areas. I did buy the phones from T-Mobile and they did say they would consider crediting them toward iPhones…but I got the top of the line Samsungs…I think they’d give me bottom of the line iPhones…and my wife won’t do Apple.
I agree…it was about the same time as the merger. But from what I’ve read in the T-Mobile forum, it seems to be happening with other carriers as well…and other android phones. So it then seems like it would be from an Android update. Perhaps the “Tasker” route is the only solution for now. It looked pretty complicated so I’ll need to work through it. But this shouldn’t be necessary! Don’t you think the carriers would admit this is a problem and be working on a fix? Why are they still claiming they haven’t even heard of it? Read your own forums T-Mobile!
I have a Samsung Galaxy S20+ unlocked and my wife an S10 unlocked. Neither have had any problems with WiFi preference. It has been on since we bought them 15 months ago…
Snapdragon our t-mobile problem? Ours are European models, with Exynos chips.
I’ve had VoLTE on my phones for 3 years, on T-mobile, Vodafone and congstar (MVNO on T-mobile Germany) and have not experienced the problem.
None of the Android phones had Qualcomm chips and were all unlocked, European models on German carriers.
I suspect something to do with the US carriers or US Android patches.
Check before you try Tasker if Bixby Routines will change this setting for you automatically. You could base this on your location, or whenever you connect to WiFi, or put a button on your home screen.
Bixby Routines isn’t as powerful as Tasker, but it is much easier to use, and is included with the phone.
Out of interest, have you got the ‘Switch to mobile data’ enabled in advanced WiFi settings? I’ve had to turn this off, as we have no mobile data coverage at home, but the phone would keep switching away from WiFi by itself.
Thanks! Very interesting. I hadn’t seen the “switch to mobile data” setting before. The T-Mobile folks didn’t mention it either. I see it is currently selected. I will try it with that off for awhile as a test. But certainly, it seems like I’d want that on. The idea should be that the phone should always try to connect with whatever source is viable…but I’m trying to tell it (and lock it in) that wifi is my preferred source.
Bixby??? Well, I’ve tried to turn it off and ignore it completely. But, if in fact it can manage this setting, it’s certainly worth trying. Thanks. I’ll give it a try.
I very much appreciate everyone’s suggestions!!!
Thanks David.
This is yet another clue. It is important to accumulate data on which phones have this issue and which do not. Our phones are not unlocked but are locked to T-Mobile. Perhaps that is the problem. We certainly could unlock them…might be worth a try. Thanks.
I’m seeing now that the locked vs unlocked situation does not make a difference. In fact, it appears that unlocked phones have the issue more often. Of course data can be misleading. Likely most twit subscribers would have unlocked phones skewing any data here.
So, the question remains, why are some phones seeing this problem and others not? We did have this same issue with our previous phones, two Galaxy Note 8’s, and was partly why we upgraded to our new phones, S21 Ultra and Note 20…and come to think of it, both were unlocked. Still a mystery!
Thanks
Yeah, they don’t really make Bixby Routines obvious. It’s automation (not the voice assistant), bit like Apple Shortcuts on iOS. You have to long-press on the quick panel toggle to get to it initially. In the settings you can enable an application drawer icon.
That other setting is prob nothing. Just wondered if the phone trying to be too clever switching from WiFi to mobile data was causing issues for the T-Mobile WiFi calling settings.
@cellular_preferred good idea to ask here - we’ve got some real experts.
I still think it’s related to an unreliable Wi-fi signal. The point of Tasker is to force the setting on whenever you’re home. For that it should work well.