I have a Samsung Galaxy Note 22 Ultra. Originally T-Mobile, but it was unlocked and is now on US Mobile Lite speed (using T-Mobile network). This problem is carrier-independent.
I live on a hill, and there is very limited cell signal indoor. The phone often switches between 4G and 5G all on its own even when set stationary on my desk in my home office. If I move around the house, it will sometimes hit cell dead spots, too. Even when the phone has cell signal, data transfer speed (speedtest) is measured in kbps, not mbps. Incoming calls seldom get through when the phone is on cell signal. Texting usually does, but sometimes with a lag of several minutes. Outgoing texts often get stuck and need to be resent. Basically, the cell signal is useless. I have tried other carriers, and they are even worse. Between the terrain on the hills, and the very strong building materials in my mansion, it is akin to a Faraday cage. I tried installing cell booster/repeater before, but it did not help, because the signal outside is too weak, especially during inclement weather. The booster actually made things worse.
Because of this, I have a 6-AP Unifi mesh Wifi system. I set Wifi calling preferences to "Wifi preferred". Obviously, I don't want cell to ever be the priority. Unfortunately, periodically, the phone shows the message "Wifi calling preferences have been optimized". And it resets the preference to "Cellular preferred". This happens every single day. How can I make the setting stick ?
The only workaround I can think of is to disable mobile data when I am at home, or put the phone in airplane mode, but that is not a great solution, as I may forget to turn it back on when I leave the house.
I found another thread about another user having the same issue on an S21 ultra. He solved it by disabling "switch to mobile data" under intelligent Wifi. Unfortunately, that setting was already off on mine. I just disabled all the other options under intelligent Wifi as well, but I doubt that will have the desired effect of locking the Wifi calling preferences.
Wifi calling works with most carriers on factory-unlocked phones, provided the proper connection settings are enabled. The priority bit is on Samsung to fix.
I agree it would be very helpful in this case to have a "connected without Internet" routine. I still would not want to disconnect from Wifi upon detecting this, though, again because of the home automation system. I would only want to disable airplane mode/enable cellular. And similarly, once the ISP comes back, I would need to detect that too, and have the phone go back to airplane mode/cellular off.
Leaving the Wifi off at the end of the routine would work indeed, but it is a massive inconvenience. It means I have to turn it back on manually every time I get home. I'm likely not going to remember. And computers are supposed to do the automation for you. This has all kinds of negative consequences such as missed/non-working calls and texts, unnecessary use of carrier data, etc.
I understand your issue. I do dusagree, though, that the priority is determined by Samsung. I don't think they have a dog in that fight. Why would Sansung care whether you were using cellular or wifi calling. The carriers, however, scae a lot of bandwidth and a speedier data stream the less people on it at any given time. Especially since most offer reasonably oriced unlimited plans, so they are not making money on excess data use.
You are moving the goal posts. I said nothing about anybody's financial interest in cell or Wifi calling preferences. I'm talking about a bug, nothing more. Samsung develops the firmware for the phone, including exposing the Wi-fi calling icon, and the implementation of the priority settings, and so-called "optimizations". Carriers may customize the firmware, but again, the Wifi calling can still work on phones with factory-unlocked firmware that carriers haven't tainted, and I believe the priority is broken there too, though I have not taken steps to reflash my phone this way and verify it.
I found out that there are a whole bunch of call options that are greyed out when the phone is in airplane mode. Most of the Phone app's settings, for one, including call blocking, which I wanted to modify today. I couldn't add a number to the list without taking the phone out of airplane mode.
Switching to another eSIM also requires taking the phone out of airplane mode. Not much sense in that.
Just one more annoying that would be solved in Samsung would fix the priority bug and disable the automatic "optimizations" in Wi-fi calling.
