Cell phones, VoLTE, 4g LTE and other confusions

Factual Questions
1

Apparently something is going to change with the Verizon network (I have a tracfone which uses it) that will render some cell phones useless after the first of the year. I have googled my brains out and still can’t figure out if I’m going to need a new phone or not. I have a CDMA 4g LTE smartphone that is not VoLTE capable. Tracfone tells me it will be affected, but not that it will become a brick on 1-1. Does anyone understand this stuff and can answer, or can you point me to a definitive answer somewhere?

This site says 4G LTE will still work, but I can’t verify this. I can’t be certain, but this seems to have nothing to do with 5g.

My phone is an LG Rebel 4G LTE.

2

Your phone should be fine as it uses CDMA and 4G LTE. See the specs in the link.

3

So, I have a Tracfone that is used almost exclusively for texting that I refill every 3 months for 20 bucks. The phone is ancient and they long ago dumped the (“dial-up”, modem-speed) internet support, but is still usable for texting (and voice calls, but I don’t use it for that.) The battery life has gotten really bad after around 7 years or so of use, and I’ve been wanting to replace it, but I’ve been unsure if I could come close to the same deal in the US–$6.67 a month (with no data included, very light usage overall.) I was just this week looking at used phones of that model on Ebay selling for less than $10, thinking about buying one or two to try their batteries, but should I even bother now? Will this change render the dumbphone into a brick?

4

Yes, I saw that. However, Amazon reviewers are saying that these phones can’t be activated on Tracfone. Mine is the sligtly older version of the Rebel. This is why I remain confused.

5

As I understand it, Vz is dropping CDMA voice calling in favor of VOLTE (Voice Over LTE) which they market as ‘HD Voice’.

Your phone needs to support VOLTE as well as 4G & LTE.

6

One would think that information on whether or not a given phone is VOLTE capable would be readily available on Tracfones that are being sold from their site then. But you would be wrong. They are still selling the Rebel 4.

7

OK, upon further reading I found this is from Verizon’swebsite (my bolding):
" Current users of CDMA-only devices or 4G LTE voice-capable devices that do not support HD Voice service can continue to use their current devices until we retire our CDMA network, or can change devices as follows:

Users of CDMA-only devices can only change to other CDMA-only devices or to 4G LTE devices that support HD Voice.

** Users of 4G LTE smartphones that do not support HD Voice can only change to other 4G LTE smartphones that do not support HD Voice or 4G LTE HD Voice devices.**"

So I would say (FWIW) you’re OK for now, pohjonen, and Darren, but you’ll need a new phone when the CDMA network goes down, contary to what I said before.