[Sony Xperia XA2 Questions & Answers] Chris8top8he8r:
Hey @MatthewIsLost.

I'm not sure if you still have your XA2 like I do. I'm busy and just kept using it. I'm being forced to do something finally because my carrier is shutting down 3G and they think I have a 3G phone because it keeps switching to 3G for voice calls for months or maybe a year and a half. When I first bought the phone the switches in the OS were there for VoLTE and WiFi-calling, but I didn't know what they were and was busy. When I would work on my H or H+ calls problem every few months with AT&T I learned I wanted those features. Never could get it. Sony was patiently helpful over the last couple years about this and advised they would not update the phone OTA with an update that would take away any features of the phone such as VoLTE and WiFi-calling. They also gave me the URL last week that shows the XA2 as a Sony phone with VoLTE at this link...

https://www.sony.com/electronics/support/articles/SX570801

When it opens, click the "Applicable Products..." as shown below.

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With this recent push from AT&T to get a 4G phone, I finally decided it's time to figure this out. I spent some hours with tech support at AT&T and finally one rep listened to my symptoms and ran tests for about 45 minutes and finally asked me if my phone said AT&T at the top. It did not. That led to me finally spend more hours figuring out how to flash my Sony. Hadn't flashed with fastboot and adb since my old MotoX. Dialing *#*#4636#*#* has also shown dimmed out buttons like yours. No one could tell me what that meant. By the way, I stopped by Verizon store and they were very helpful and put in a Verizon SIM they had lying around and my phone booted with it and my screen said Verizon at the top left as it was supposed to. That was done with the flash of LineageOS ROM on my phone.

A few days ago I used the installation instructions at LineageOS to put LineageOS 18.1 on my XA2, so right now I'm running Android 11 (LineageOS 18.1) and have been testing it for a few days. Getting a new SIM I hope soon, and also hope to get a cleaner flash of LineageOS before that SIM. I still have trouble with my signal strength icon and it still doesn't say AT&T in the top left of my screen, but it now says AT&T in the settings menu next to signal strength icon. I also now have the VoLTE switch in Settings/Network/Mobile Network where it should be, and WiFi-calling switch is in the Phone app settings under calls where it should be, and they are also showing as all turned on now in *#*#4636#*#* menu. So it is real progress on learning something. Not sure what yet. Since I flashed, it doesn't switch to H or H+ any more on calls, but whenever I make a call it switches from LTE to 4G, so I'm still not allowed VoLTE for some reason.

Malware? With LineageOS, I also installed Protectstar's Anti Spy and it identifies "Data Transfer Tool" as malware and that the program's source is unknown. I cannot delete it. Search reveals a regular Data Transfer Tool is a Google app. So could this be a fake version of the real Google app, or a false positive? No idea. Maybe if Data Transfer Tool really is malware or is fake version of the real app that adds reporting capabiliy, could it be such a good fake that Google won't let me delete that part of the OS. I also accidentally found 1 app had permission to use Unrestricted Data and it was Google Play services. I don't know if it is supposed to, but I turned it off. The thinking on my part is it would fit in with how my phone behaves. It's like there is never too much damage, it has mostly been like someone is in the way hampering me and getting all my data. Makes it difficult to grow a business over years.

Also after this new Lineage flash, I noticed at boot up, even though I always keep location turned off, the little tear drop icon indicating "location on" would show up at the top of my screen for 1-2 seconds as though reporting my location. As I drove around town and tried to keep tabs on my signal I would see the location being turned on and off again and again from time to time. Since I reported this over email and voice calls, it seems to have stopped. Since I don't know much, I still think there is malware. I learned some time back there is SIM malware. SIMs have microprocessors too. Check out this...

SIM cards Forensic Analysis with Oxygen Software | Digital Forensics | Computer Forensics | Blog

www.digitalforensics.com

I hope to have a cleaner flash of my XA2 today or tomorrow and a new SIM soon to get my phone to say AT&T at the top. We'll see.

If anyone knows where I can read about securely overwriting my phone storage without losing the ability to flash a new ROM, it would be great to hear from you. I thought I remembered using TWRP years ago with an option to format and it took a long time for a 32 GB phone as it should. But I wasn't able yet to confirm on the Net that TWRP overwrites all partitions. I see the "fastboot format" but something I read made me think it was only for the user data. I have lots to read.