So in the next few days Apple will likely release the iPhone 6 and shortly after release iOS 8 to existing iOS users. One of the long awaited features finally brought to the platform is Wifi-Calling, one of the best and most usueful features of years past in my opinion. However this is especially true in T-Mobile's case. Although their network can be great at times it often ends up leaving more to be desired. T-Mobile's Wifi-Calling is able to largely make up for that by taking advantage of the large amount of hotspots available to a person at any given time. However with this feature comes many possible draw backs, in which whether they occur is largely based on there implementation of the feature. I've listed some major ones below.
1. Bad Coverage areas may continue to drain battery. When a phone is in a bad coverage area, it is constantly searching for a signal, and as such the phone is forced to use more battery life. Wifi-Calling is supposed to be there for situations like this. So on the iPhone, when Wifi-Calling is enabled, will the phone stop searching for a signal and as such preserve battery life?
2. Complete Phone support may not be covered. Will the iPhones other core phone services be supported namely texting? I mean texting is just as an important form of communication as voice calls and its kind of unthoughtful to not include it.
3. Phone may disconnect from public wifi. A lot of times I find that my phone disconnects from public wifi networks if left asleep for too long and I'm forced to log back in. If this happens Wifi Calling is rendered basically useless for receiving calls and battery life will also suffer.
Basically if Wifi calling doesn't work radio magic then the phones battery will suffer heavily, if there is no iPhone SMS support then Wifi-Calling is still for a large part useless as more people text nowadays than make phone calls and automatic network disconnects can make the feature unusable.
I recently moved to a a new area and in many places I can get a decent signal. However I have horribly service at most of my school and work so horrible that I often have to put my phone into airplane mode just so the battery doesn't drain, basically cutting me off from my friends and family for a large part of the day. I can deal with not having that good of a signal here or there but when its like this its ridiculous. And if Wifi-Calling is still not able to solve this issue because of a crappy un-thought-out implementation I will be switching BACK to America's Most Reliable Network where I NEVER had any issue with getting a signal.
John Legere can say all he wants about more data capacity per user but the fact of the matter is that T-Mobile's network, although much improved in the last few years, is simply lackluster in comparison to the other big three. It can be great in large cities but it is most often horrible in-between & on the outskirts of cities, in buildings, the countryside and sometimes just random places. Never take a T-Mobile Phone on a road trip expecting to use it for GPS. These issues persist largely because of T-Mobile's lack of low band spectrum which is able to stretch far and deep. This spectrum is of limited quantity (largely thanks to the duopoly) and the only way for T-Mobile to gain such spectrum is to pay up the $$$ which is currently in short supply at the company. Translation it will be a while before the network gets up to a reliable network.
I know I was kind of all over the place in this post but basically I'm stressing my concerns over whether Wifi-Calling is able todo what its marketed to do on the iPhone. As well as the bigger picture of the reliability of T-Mobile network. T-Mobile gets so much right and is doing so much for the industry as a whole yet their #1 obligation to their customers, providing reliable phone service, is in question. Verzion & AT&T may be overpriced but at least their customers get the piece of mind of nearly always getting a good signial. And that may be enough for me to make the switch.