Courtesy of Samsung’s SHANNON222 modem chipset, embedded in an LTE-Advanced variant of the Galaxy S4 now available in South Korea, the manufacturer says customers using the device (on SRVCC-enabled networks) will be the first in the world to take advantage of the call handover technology on a commercial basis.

SRVCC, or single radio voice call continuity, allows customers to maintain call sessions when they move from LTE’s packet-switched domain to legacy circuit-switched voice networks running over 2G and 3G – a useful function when operators are in the early stages of VoLTE deployment and 4G network availability is relatively scarce.

South Korea’s mobile operators, however, are pushing ahead aggressively with LTE and LTE-A network rollouts.