[Verizon Samsung Galaxy S8 Questions & Answers] Burban502:
Going to have to bump this given I'm in this exact situation as well... I dropped ye ol' flip phone into the river sacrificed my old phone to the Fishing Gods a couple weeks ago at the cabin and so I figured it was time to get on the Smartphone bandwagon. (I've owned a Galaxy S1 for a number of years now, but strictly used it as a media player due to the Wolfson DAC)

I'm a fan of the Exynos, personally, and in addition to that it's the only way to get the Wolfson DAC on the Galaxy (unless that partnership has ceased?) so that sadly rules out

all

the US models with their Qualcomm chip.

THAT being said, here's the bit of information that no one seems to be mentioning and what has me wondering if all this "WILL NOT WORK ON CDMA NETWORKS" warnings that sellers make is not that big of an issue in reality...

Back in like 2015 or even earlier, Verizon started making plans to abandon CDMA altogether, and at some point Bell Canada had issued the same plans. Which as far as what I've read indicates, Bell has already made good on that as of this year. This is where things get interesting though... Verizon has indicated that they will have phased out their CDMA usage by Dec 31 2019, but as of June (2018) they've already stopped activating devices that rely on CDMA! In addition to that, they've been repurposing (was called 'refarming') the CDMA frequencies for LTE usage anyways; however, for companies, if they make a request, they can retain special CDMA network access for an additional 3 years as the infrastructure will still be there. LTE will co-exist on the band with CDMA, but I take that as meaning complete phase out and change-over to full LTE is still 4-5yrs off.

But I digress, the takeaway here is that Verizon is putting everything into VoLTE considering all their current Flip Phones are all LTE capable (hell, one of them has a quad core Snapdragon 410!) and since we know that the Exynos HAS VoLTE support, what we all need to know now are a couple things:

1) Do the Exynos varriants have the option to enable VoLTE out of the box ?(it's apparently in the Network menu under Call Settings?)

2) If they do not have the option, can it be easily baked into ROMs?

3) Does the radio need a modified/region specific firmware?

I'm honestly right on the verge of buying an Exynos powered S8 (or Note 8) and this is basically what's holding me back. It's not that it CAN work with Verizon, since all I've read on the technical side is indicating Yes. Mainly because of what the Flip Phones they offer currently have detailed, for example one model only has Band 4 and Band 13 for its LTE support, which the G950F/FD has both as well. Additionally, Verizon has been using the AWS (1700MHz) band for LTE as well over the last couple years, which the G950F/FD lists as well (albeit under the 3G). Given my Hotspot was provided the capability of using AWS for LTE in an OTA update, I can only assume that this is also possible for any other LTE device whose radio has AWS support.

So with that said, can anyone here with an Exynos-powered S8 (or Note 8) or has the necessary knowledge who can answer any of those three questions? :o