I’ll just be happy if they have basic things like VoIP and emergency call handling properly defined.
Australia shut down our 2G and 3G networks, and it’s been an absolute dumpster fire.
A bunch of early 4G phones drop back to 3G for voice calls, but that’s really easy to check for and that’s mostly old phones anyway.
The real dumpster fire was emergency calls. It turns out there’s phones in the wild with fully functional VoLTE but internal logic that forces them to drop back to 3G or 2G specifically for emergency calls.
Other phones can make emergency calls, but only on certain networks - a phone will try any available network regardless of SIM card when making emergency calls.
Or a phone can make emergency calls on any network - but only if it’s running the correct modem firmware version.
Or it’ll work on any network if it has a Telstra SIM card, but if it has an Optus card it can’t make an emergency call on Telstra because it isn’t running the Telstra-specific VoLTE code anymore.
The best part is that this emergency call functionality depends on you specifically dialling the emergency number, so there’s no way to test any device other than actually dialling an emergency.
Call the nonemergency number and ask them how they want you to handle dialing the emergency number. Usually it’s “yeah we got you, just call it and confirm it’s not an emergency”. Phone techs do this all the time.
You can place test calls, but emergency calls are magically handled differently and the only way to trigger that is to make an emergency call.
Carriers can test phones in their labs, but they have no way to know what modem firmware end users are running. The same hardware sold in different places can have different software images loaded.
Well, from a technical standpoint, nothing speaks again adding another number to the emergency number list (there’s already multiple across the world and even within most countries) that’ll be handled the same up until somewhere very close to the destination, where it’ll be routed into an answering machine.
You could do that, but you know some of these manufacturers will treat the test number as a special case that works differently to real emergency numbers. And half of the rest will treat it as a normal number, so dial it normally.
I’ll just be happy if they have basic things like VoIP and emergency call handling properly defined.
Australia shut down our 2G and 3G networks, and it’s been an absolute dumpster fire.
A bunch of early 4G phones drop back to 3G for voice calls, but that’s really easy to check for and that’s mostly old phones anyway.
The real dumpster fire was emergency calls. It turns out there’s phones in the wild with fully functional VoLTE but internal logic that forces them to drop back to 3G or 2G specifically for emergency calls.
Other phones can make emergency calls, but only on certain networks - a phone will try any available network regardless of SIM card when making emergency calls.
Or a phone can make emergency calls on any network - but only if it’s running the correct modem firmware version.
Or it’ll work on any network if it has a Telstra SIM card, but if it has an Optus card it can’t make an emergency call on Telstra because it isn’t running the Telstra-specific VoLTE code anymore.
The best part is that this emergency call functionality depends on you specifically dialling the emergency number, so there’s no way to test any device other than actually dialling an emergency.
Call the nonemergency number and ask them how they want you to handle dialing the emergency number. Usually it’s “yeah we got you, just call it and confirm it’s not an emergency”. Phone techs do this all the time.
Yeah but you need everyone to do this, and also do it repeatedly with different networks in range. They aren’t set up for that sort of volume.
Gotta love the non testable features.
“Can we place a test call?”
“Why would you want to do THAT?”
You can place test calls, but emergency calls are magically handled differently and the only way to trigger that is to make an emergency call.
Carriers can test phones in their labs, but they have no way to know what modem firmware end users are running. The same hardware sold in different places can have different software images loaded.
Well, from a technical standpoint, nothing speaks again adding another number to the emergency number list (there’s already multiple across the world and even within most countries) that’ll be handled the same up until somewhere very close to the destination, where it’ll be routed into an answering machine.
You could do that, but you know some of these manufacturers will treat the test number as a special case that works differently to real emergency numbers. And half of the rest will treat it as a normal number, so dial it normally.