Ulefone Armor 27T Pro, worked for 3 months before Verizon restricted voice calls. Data only now

Martsubishi10

Purchased this phone because I am a contractor & I got tired of buying my 10th Galaxy phone because of a busted screen. The Armor is a tough phone & I also bought it because it's a dual sim and my wife is overseas where T-Mobile has better service & I won't have to pay international if I used Verizon.

I've had my Verizon 4G Sim and the T-Mobile 5G sim in it since February with both networks set for "4GLTE" in Connection settings.

I've had the VoLTE icon next to each carriers signal bars and had no problem using my Verizon data and calls for 3 months.

Verizon tells people this phone is not compatible with their network but that is patently false. I lost coverage yesterday in the city and when I got back in a service area I only had 4G with no VoLTE next to the Verizon signal. T-Mobile synced back with the network and has VoLTE. With no issues making calls or data.

I spent 5 hours with tech support yesterday to no avail. Does anyone here know what I need to do to have Verizon register this device back on for voice calls? Status is showing "Unknown" on my end. It sure looks like I am being restricted from making voice calls simply because I brought my own device into the network. This is very frustrating, but I can tell you the Ulefone Armor 27T Pro absolutely does & will work on Verizon, that is... until they turn you off!

Any input would be greatly appreciated here. How can I get my voice calls back?

SynthpopAddict

With carriers constantly upgrading/tweaking technology on their networks, I believe what's happening is that some towers with older equipment will work with your phone, but if the phone connects to a tower with new equipment, then it doesn't work anymore. 4G spectrum is still available and as far as I know, Verizon continues to have voice calls go over VoLTE. When my phone got the Android 14 update last year, the VoLTE option disappeared in my phone options...but I've been told that's because VoLTE is always enabled in Android 14.

I looked up the specs of the Ulefone Armor 27T Pro elsewhere, and there aren't many LTE bands supported. While it is a 5G capable phone, it does not support Verizon's n77 mid-band 5G and may or may not run on high-band 5G (n260 appears to be supported, but not n261). I don't know the number for the low-band 5G spectrum Verizon uses.

Something I've noticed since about a year ago in my area is my phone constantly shows a 5G symbol, but if I check more closely, phone is still using 4G a lot, because I'm prepaid and therefore have lower priority on the towers. Makes me think even the 4G spectrum is running through 5G cells now, so if your phone is set to use only 4G that can be the problem.

If you want a rugged phone, someone posted in a thread last year that they liked their Sonim phone, although I can't say for sure how compatible those are with Verizon these days. Kyocera makes some rugged phones, but software updates last year made those phones no longer work on Verizon. What about getting one of those military-grade cases for some other type of phone to protect it better?