If you have read our review of the Pixel 6a, we mentioned that the Pixel 6a is not provisioned to work on M1 5G SA network last month.

Knowing that this is more likely a firmware issue, we updated to the August issued Pixel 6a firmware (global). Again, we are unable to access the 5G SA network. In fact, VoLTE was not provisioned.

As Pixel 6a is listed to work on the M1 5G SA on the Google website, we decided to try our luck by installing the Android 13 beta 4.

To our surprise, everything now works. VoLTE works for 4G, VoNR works for 5G. Most importantly, we are now able to log into the 5G SA network.

Below is our speedtest result and screen shot of the provisioning status of the phone.

Unfortunately, even with Android 13 beta 4, SIMBA still couldn’t work as VoLTE is not provisioned to work with SIMBA.

It is unsure why Google keeps locking down basic features as SIMBA is a 4G only network. Without VoLTE, it is not able to make even a single voice call through the dial pad.

By Harry