Over 2G and 3G, voice calls are circuit switched. VoLTE and VoNR are packet switched, over IP, VoIP. Totally different. VoLTE is not as standardised as it may seem from the outside whereas 2G and 3G voice calls were.
Internet access is not regulated as an emergency service.
It’s easy to forget that our pocket computers are also telephones, and thus emergency calling devices. These are regulated with good reason. The operator/their partners have to test the device on their network to ensure it is compliant and emergency calls can be made as expected; they also need to build the VoLTE/VoWiFi/IMS settings for that specific network into the handset’s software before it will work - VoLTE has many complications, it is not one size fits all. Accordingly, some operators allow BYOD, while others will only whitelist the specific hardware and software combination they have tested and signed off on.
The US market has three big gatekeepers named Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile. They charge huge money to certify devices to work on their networks. No certification and phones won’t work properly for mission-critical stuff like VoLTE, VoWiFi, and in some cases 5G. Without these features, no-one will buy the phones.
You also need to be selling a big number of those phones to eat the cost of all that certification. And what do you know, the telcos operate the stores that sell the lion’s share of phones in the US market.
All that adds up to niche handsets only working on 1 or 2 of the telcos, or only partially, and only selling direct to consumer or on Amazon or Best Buy or wherever in negligible numbers.
And that’s why you can’t buy a Fairphone at retail in the US.
I agree wholeheartedly and would add ‘borderline unusable for voice calls’ to the XM4’s sins, which is admittedly an improvement over ‘entirely unusable for voice calls’ ala XM3/XM2/1000X. Spent quite a while trying to get the XM4 to sound ‘good’, and they just won’t.
The 1000X series has reached a level of critical mass otherwise only touched by AirPods in consumer headphoneland - people have heard of them, and want them, and read reviews which say ‘best for most people’, and their friends recommend them, and they want them more. And they buy them, and 5 stars A+++ these are the best headphones they’ve ever heard. Which is their truth. Meets the expectations of most, and exceeds for those who haven’t experienced top-tier ANC before.
Credit where it is due, Sony managed to make a product with a traditional Japanese letter-letter-number-number model, and made it famous enough to ask for by name. It is the consistency in product and marketing plus the halo effect that’s seen 1000X series reach critical mass. Reviews saying ‘actually I don’t like how these sound and struggle to get them sounding much better with the rubbish in-app EQ that doesn’t have a slider corresponding to the ~200Hz spike’ aren’t common.
We live in a world where AirPods and Spotify are good enough for most people. I’m just glad there’s room in the market for well-tuned over-ear ANC cans too.
Nice one!
I am distinctly underwhelmed in general by the XM4.
Have a look at Technics A800/AZ60/AZ60MK2/AZ80, all support simultaneous use of LDAC and multipoint. I recall something else working with both simultaneously too, possibly Huawei TWS.
They do step down a quality tier to do so, and low bitrste LDAC is generally considered poor, but it’s otherwise all there and possible.
LDAC and Multipoint do in fact mix, just not on Sony products.
5G NSA does have the same problems since it’s 4G with a 5G hat on, although the handset-side software stacks for IMS settings are slowly improving. 5G SA is still too new really.
5G theoretically replaces 2G for low-power machine-to-machine operations like connected power metres, which is the main reason 2G still exists, but of course requires new hardware.
The many joys and customer issues that happen when an older network tech is retired and the spectrum refarmed to the new standard (e.g. shutting down 2G/3G and using the bandwidth for 4G/5G) are well-documented and a smart operator can do it with comparatively minimal friction, it just takes a long time to do it right.