MetroPCS WiFi Calling with a Blu Windows HD LTE Phone

A reader, Sheldon, asks…

Hi, I just purchased the Blu Windows HD LTE, and had a fiasco of a night trying to get it to work as well as my LG Leon (G3 for the rest of the world). I was able to get calls and a text to come through, but with only 1 bar of coverage vs 5 bars of LTE for the Android LG Leon with the same SIM… I gave up at that point and had Metro switch me back to the Leon, which immediately went back to full bars LTE. I have confirmed the Blu supports all the necessary bandwidths and frequencies but, no luck. As an aside, after placing the SIM back into my Leon, WiFi calling never worked again. Does anyone know if the Blu Win HD LTE supports WiFi calling, and or does it “kill” it in the sim if it doesn’t? I switched to another SIM I had on hand and am currently awaiting the “Up to two hours” wait for all features to be restored before I try the WiFi calling again on my LG… ANY guidance on the Blu will be greatly appreciated, thank you.

And, I have yet to try the mms and apn settings as I’m not sure if I should just return this Blu before the return window closes…

Hi Sheldon,
The BLU Win HD LTE looks like a cool phone. My wife and I were looking at it in the Microsoft store last weekend, it has a nice design.

With respect to the 4G LTE and 1 bars vs 5 bars. I’m not sure that the bars are an accurate measurement of your LTE signal. I’m also not really sure that either of these phones is using the 4G LTE network for calling and not the 3G network. Most carriers initially rolled out LTE for data and are in the process of migrating voice service to LTE of time. I’d run speedtest to measure the difference in performance for data speeds an rely on your subjective option for call quality issues. That said it does sound like there is a difference between the two phones.
The BLU phone supports:
3G: 850/1700/1900/2100
4G LTE: 700/1700/2600

and the LG Leon supports:E
2G bands GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900
3G bands HSDPA 900 / 1900 / 2100 – H340N
4G bands LTE band 1(2100), 3(1800), 7(2600), 8(900), 20(800) – H340

It’s possible that MetroPCS network is using the additional bands that the Leon supports in your area.

As for WiFi calling, I’m not really familiar with this feature. My understanding is that MetroPCS, which is actually the TMobile network, does support Wi-Fi calling. I’d check the device settings to see if you have the option to turn on Wi-Fi calling. This video from T-Mobile shows how https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxn33ccMLf4.

From what I read online some people are saying that WiFi calling will only work on carrier branded phones. I assume the Leon is a TMobile phone, which would make sense that it works on MetroPCS. I did find this one article, that tells about a little trick to get wifi calling working on a Windows phone with TMobile. It might work for MetroPCS too.
http://www.phonearena.com/news/Want-to-use-Wi-Fi-calling-on-your-T-Mobile-HTC-8X_id43592

Let me know how you make out.