The Nexus 5 might not get VoLTE or WiFi calling on T-Mobile after all
When T-Mobile announced that WiFi calling and VoLTE would arrive on the Google Nexus 6 by Motorola by early 2015, many hopeful Android enthusiasts assumed that these features would eventually make their way over to the Nexus 5 by LG, as well. After all, the whole point of the Nexus program is to showcase what Android can be – and part of that includes reducing fragmentation and running near-identical versions of software across all Nexus devices. When a new feature is introduced to one Nexus device, it’s introduced to all Nexus devices, except for the oldest ones that are no longer supported.
At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work in theory.
According to T-Mobile’s official product guru @askdesk, in response to a Twitter user who asked about VoLTE and WiFi calling coming to the Nexus 5:
@taino211 Right now were focused on Nexus 6, it’s going to take us a couple of months to get it done on that device alone!
— Des (@askdes) October 22, 2014
And when pressed on the matter, Des almost got defensive:
so if you want a “sure thing” for WiFi calling – there are other devices in the T-Mobile portfolio to be considered
I don’t know about you, but that doesn’t sound very promising to me.
Of course, there is always the possibility that developers might be able to port at least the WiFi calling feature over to other Nexus devices once it is available on the Nexus 6, but VoLTE is another story, since radio updates are not open source and not compatible with different devices.
Oh, well. This isn’t a definitive no – but it’s also not the answer most of us probably hoped for.
