[Samsung Galaxy Note 8 Themes, Apps, and Mods] shouren04:
If you're running a custom kernel & have VoLTE and/or RCS enabled by CSC or manually, chances are you have these icons in the status bar. Here's an alternate method on how to hide them if you don't like them as much as I do rather than editing the icons in imsservice.apk. With the editing imsservice.apk method changes need to made whenever imsservice.apk versions change.

This is not limited to the Note 8, will work on other devices also. Custom recovery like TWRP & root required.

This is not a full guide but I may add something later. Just info on how to hide the icons & it's not hard.

Info to read before starting

Custom kernels usually have ro.debuggable set to 1 like with eng & userdebug builds. This allows the system to be debuggable & allows you run root permissions in adb using the adb root command. On production builds like final release stock kernel ro.debuggable is set to 0. This will not allow you to run the adb root command, it will tell you adbd cannot run as root in production builds. You can still grant root access using adb shell su. So if you need ro.debuggable=1, then this is not for you.

This does not disable the VoLTE & RCS services, it simply hides the icons from the status bar like stock.

Disclaimer

I am not responsible for any damage or mishaps. If you follow as instructed everything will go fine, it's just a simple edit. As always, make a full backup or at least just the boot partition just in case.

We need to edit default.prop & set ro.debuggable to 0. This is loaded in ramdisk so you can not simply use a file explorer to edit default.prop. Changes will not be saved after reboot.

Extract boot.img (kernel image) from flashable kernel zip. This is usually named according to the device, something like "greatlte-eur.img" for Note 8. Using your choice of method/software unpack boot.img (I use MTK Extractor). Edit default.prop & change ro.debuggable=1 to ro.debuggable=0. Save changes & repack. Replace the boot.img in the zip with the newly edited boot.img (rename file if required, needs to be the same as originally in the zip). Flash zip in TWRP, reflash root, reboot to system & enjoy!

Note 8 alternatives & additional.

Before I figured this out I noticed that @pappschlumpf Smurf kernel v2.0.4 (only) & Aurora kernel have ro.debuggable set to 0. You can simply flash these kernels & the VoLTE/RCS icons will be hidden. As mentioned, stock kernel is also set to 0 & is why you won't see the icons with stock kernel. @Mentalmuso Weta BR5 ROM Base #2 now has these changes made to the kernels included with his ROM.

If you don't use VoLTE & RCS services, you can simply disable them in IMS Settings & the icons will turn off.

To enable the VoLTE quick settings tile, add this to your unencrypted cscfeatures.xml or others.xml. This will not hide the VoLTE icon in the status bar if present but the toggle is useful to turn off VoLTE service when you don't need it like if you are in an area where VoLTE service is spotty. (Only add the value in blue as you will have other values already)

[COLOR=blue][COLOR=Black]<CscFeature_SystemUI_ConfigDefQuickSettingItem>[/COLOR]VoLte[COLOR=Black]</CscFeature_SystemUI_ConfigDefQuickSettingItem>[/COLOR][/COLOR]