Google blocks Android hack that let Pixel users enable VoLTE anywhere

Pixel phones are beloved for their many unique software features, but their limited availability prevents many people from buying them. While Google has made strides in expanding access, Pixels still aren’t sold in nearly as many countries as iPhones or Samsung Galaxy devices. This leads many fans to import Pixel phones from other markets, a move that can unfortunately break crucial calling features like VoLTE and VoWiFi.

VoLTE (Voice over LTE) is the feature that routes voice calls over a 4G LTE connection, a crucial function now that carriers worldwide are phasing out their 2G and 3G networks. Without it, you might not be able to make phone calls at all on many modern networks. Similarly, VoWiFi (Voice over WiFi) handles Wi-Fi calling, routing calls over a Wi-Fi network instead of cellular — a handy feature when you’re in a building with poor signal.

In theory, any phone with the right hardware for a carrier’s cellular frequencies should be able to use VoLTE, and any capable phone with a supporting plan should get VoWiFi. The reality, however, is more complex. Many carriers only permit VoLTE and VoWiFi on devices they sell or have officially tested. This means that even if your imported Pixel has the necessary hardware, the carrier can still block these features, potentially preventing you from making voice calls entirely.

This issue plagued Pixel phone importers until Korean developer Kyujin Cho released a workaround in 2023. The developer’s app, “Pixel IMS,” enables VoLTE and VoWiFi on unsupported carriers by overriding the carrier check that Android normally performs. Normally, Android uses a signal from the carrier to decide whether to enable VoLTE for the device; the Pixel IMS app overrides this signal and forces it to always be enabled.

Overriding this check isn’t something just any app can do, as it’s part of Android’s privileged telephony framework. That’s why Pixel IMS cleverly leverages a loophole intended for testing purposes. Android allows the “shell” user — the same user that runs ADB commands — to override carrier configurations. To gain these elevated privileges, Pixel IMS uses Shizuku, an open source Android app that lets other apps run processes as the shell user.

But loopholes don’t last forever, and after more than two and a half years, Google has seemingly closed this one. Following the recent October 2025 Pixel update, many users discovered the “Pixel IMS” app was no longer functional, crashing when attempting to toggle VoLTE or VoWiFi. The crash log gives a clear reason: “overrideConfig cannot be invoked by shell.”

While not documented in the official changelog, Google appears to have quietly patched this particular exploit. According to a source, the company has designated this loophole as CVE-2025-48617, a high-severity privilege escalation vulnerability. Its absence from the October 2025 Android Security Bulletin is likely because it didn’t meet the “high risk” threshold for immediate inclusion under Google’s new Risk-Based Update System (RBUS). Google will probably include it in the next quarterly security bulletin, scheduled for December.

Fortunately for Pixel users, another developer has allegedly found a new workaround. While the new method isn’t as accessible — with the instructions being in Chinese and the APK distributed on the developer’s Telegram channel — it at least seems to work.

Unfortunately, the new method only enables VoLTE and not VoWiFi, so Pixel users in unsupported regions who need the latter feature will have to root their phones for now. Rooting requires unlocking the bootloader, which breaks some Gemini-powered features and complicates using Google Wallet. The only other alternative is to wait for Google to officially enable VoLTE in more markets — something the company recently signaled it’s working on.