When I used to work for a large mobile network, we would spend ages testing the firmware of new devices. Even giants (at the time) like Nokia would release phones which couldn't dial the emergency services, or put out more than the legal limit of radiation, or were in other ways defective.
We'd test, send a report back, wait a few weeks, get a new firmware, test again, repeat until everything worked. It took months. That was fine when phones weren't expected to be updated by users.
But when more modern phones arrived with flashable firmware, customers couldn't stand the delays associated with testing. They'd see a new firmware had been released and complained that the mobile network operators were delaying progress, dragging our feet, deliberately depriving customers of something cool.
The fact was, operators very often didn't certify the firmware because it contained *dangerous* bugs. I'm sure there was also a cost element - why pay to re-test a phone that you're no longer selling? - but that wasn't the primary driver.
Well, the manufacturers and customers "won". If you buy a phone through your network, it probably has a network-certified firmware blob. If not, you're at the mercy of the manufacturer.
Well, the fact that big American mobile operators outright blocked or delayed updates for months did not go unnoticed.
Testing is one thing, but in my first hand experience, many carriers used this "testing" as a convenient way to block phone updates without preloaded bloatware preferring their services or apps they were paid to put on the phones.
The way I see it, this just moves the responsibility for safety to the manufacturers instead of the network. It's on the specific company then to provide adequate QA for their firmware before they release updates, or it reflects badly on them. This fiasco for example, tells me to never buy a Google phone since they apparently don't test their devices properly.
I'm not sure why it would be on the network to test devices anyway, it's not like every net card needs to be approved by ICANN or something. There should be standards to adhere to, if those are breached on either end, fines should follow.
It was considered the utmost priority for a call to 911 to be clear enough for the other side to hear that you are an employee at a testing facility verifying that the device does work and the other person can hear you and NOT dispatch emergency services....
Wait, shouldn't be something like FCC certifying emission levels not some random mobile network operator ? Or at least company run by them as to not have to repeat test same thing over and over again ?
I appreciate the value of this, but the incentives are too biased to function properly. I think a good remedy (which would also tackle a number of other conflicts of interests and biased incentives) would be for anti-trust prohibitions on mobile network operators from selling cell phones at all.
Let the network operators continue to certify phones, like hardware manufacturers do with hard drives, memory, etc., dimmer manufacturers do with LEDs, etc.
Make the certification tests, steps and costs transparent to both device manufacturers and the public.
And I hope we never go back. That phase of mobile phone history was unbearable and carriers insufferable. If issues are slipping through, it’s manufacturers who should be held to account for their faulty devices. And if faulty firmware/software is a persistent problem, then society should step in and regulate.
Such things should be under the prerogative of the national telecom regulator body to be checked in the type approval procedure. After all, before EU took the care of this, telecom equipment in European countries had homologation marks of the local FCC equivalents.
It used to be true that even when having an unlocked device here in Sweden, the operator actually tested and certified the updates, and I know this because updates used to be released at wildly different times between different operators. I assume this has stopped now that I read this, because I do get security updates straight away, and I get the feeling everyone does.
Sounds like you’re unhappy that people didn’t want the network to be responsible for checking against bugs. But would the opposite actually be fine? What about people who buy their phones from the manufacturers?
The problem with operators is not only that they often delayed fixing critical bugs for no good reason; they also liked to add maliceware. I remember a Nokia phone with one key dedicated to trick users into starting it by accident, which of course was billed.
Apple preventing network operators from breaking their software on purpose was a huge step forward.
> If you're logged out, launching Microsoft Teams 10 times will result in 10 duplicate PhoneAccounts from Teams clogging your phone. Teams shouldn't do this, and Microsoft's update stopped Teams from doing this, but a bunch of duplicate PhoneAccounts also shouldn't be enough to bring Android's phone system to its knees.
> Next bug: when picking a PhoneAccount to run the emergency call through, [...] it's possible for this to result in an integer overflow or underflow, and now the phone subsystem is going to crash.
> A third bug in this mess is that Microsoft Teams does not even register itself as an emergency call handler.
> An update is not arriving for the Pixel 6 yet. Google's newest flagship is going though a bit of an update crisis at the moment. The December 2021 update was pulled due to unrelated "mobile connectivity issues" (phone calls don't work). While Google scrambles to fix everything, the next Pixel 6 update with this 911 fix is due in "late January." Until then, it's normal to be on the November patch. Both of Google's "early January" and "late January" patch timelines seem incredibly slow for a bug that could cause users to literally die.
If the OP article is correct, then apparently this still hasn't actually been fixed yet.
I'm all over the place with pocket computing devices and remain confused. I once has an iphone. Beautifully crafted, both inside and out, but so frustratingly locked down that I was desperate to leave it behind. They have progressively opened up the platform, but it always lags behind (I remember I couldn't access the cloud storage from anything other than a mac).
My favourite devices have been more alternative. E90 running symbian, which was fairly 'open' for its time - I could install any software, proper multitasking. The N900 also, full linux system, great phone. But then the apps I find useful, are often not available for that platform.
At the moment I'm on Pixel, which has been a good balance between being well supported, while still fairly open. I can sideload apps, run a linux distro in the form of termux. As a bonus the camera is great. I have to remind myself that while it might not quite compare to iphones in terms of refinement and hardware, I do at least have more freedom on the platform, and it's easy to take that for granted until you lose it.
I’m in a similar position. I used iPhone for years but after they started to remove important apps from AppStore I decided to move to pixel. UX is terrible and unpolished. Hardware is just bad. But I can sideload and that’s more important.
Ah yes... the yearly pixel/nexus emergency call bug. I would say it's a total shame for Google that they really have repeating probably life threatening bugs in their phones but they don't seem to care at all.
They've had this problem for at least a few years, dating all the way back to the OG Pixel 1. I filed an FCC complaint about it four years ago. Not much has changed.
I was a lifelong Android user, but after I heard about this, I purchased my first iPhone this year. Completely absurd that Google refuses to prioritize safety. While I am mad the bug happened (there should be a dedicated test suite for safety features) - I am furious that there is no stop-the-world escalation to get the problem resolved.
I hate so much about the Apple ecosystem, but screw Google. If it is not a KPI product promotion package, evidently it is not worth the time.
> “So this is what happens on my brand new $1,000 Google phone when I try to call 911.”
How old is this story? The news report is from 2 days ago, but surely in 2022 the person filming the TikTok video wouldn't call a Pixel 6 a "brand new $1,000 Google phone"?
As an end user today with a Pixel 6, what am I supposed to do if I can't rely on them to get this right? I NEED 999 to work. If not for me, then the people around me. Am I supposed to go and ring 999 to test it after every major update until Google gives an actual statement on the condition of their shitty product that has failed the most important use-case? That doesn't scale and if nothing else, Google should understand a scaling problem...
> As an end user today with a Pixel 6, what am I supposed to do if I can't rely on them to get this right?
Buy a Pixel Watch! I’m sure emergency dialling won’t be broken on both the watch and phone at the same time!
But in seriousness, I personally just accept that cell phones aren’t a bulletproof way of accessing emergency services. At any point in time, my phone could be out of service, out of battery, dropped and broken, unconnected due to a network outage, etc. An emergency services bug is a qualitative difference, not a quantitative one. I qualitatively increase my odds of being able to access emergency services by running redundant systems - I have a VoIP landline, my partner has a cell phone with a different OS/mobile network than me, I carry a PLB if I’m in the wild. (I plan on getting an LTE-capable watch at some point - the Pixel Watch is quite unappealing for the price though.) (Will probably switch from PLB to sat messenger when the battery on this expires, which will double as an emergency service contact backup.)
Do you have any local emergency non-999 numbers? I have saved the numbers for the local emergency dispatch numbers for the cities around me, along with the non-emergency ones. This is also where directing specific people around you to call 999 (or calling on another person's phone) is a backup plan.
Well, I'm being pedantic but how do you know Google tracking never once failed? It could fail 50 times a day in strange circumstances but work just often enough to keep the approximate trail without you being aware. In fact, I'm nearly certain that just due to the ubiquity of Googles tracking, it's vastly more likely to break than the phone services. Now, each of these have very different meanings and severity and all concern is certainly warranted but if you do, I would be interested in how you're tracking google's tracking
The regulation problem is that the "Wireless Communications and
Public Safety Act of 1999", which requires carriers to support 911, predates smartphones with non-carrier software. There's Kari's Law, [1] which requires multi-line phone systems to support direct 911 (not 9-911, or diverting 911 calls to in house guards). That applied to the Microsoft Teams problem, where Microsoft Teams was capturing 911 calls but not connecting them if the user was not logged into Teams.
If the FCC went after Google on this, they could probably win claiming clear legislative intent to cover all the cases, and that a third party who insinuates themselves into the call chain has the same liability as the carrier. File a formal complaint with the FCC, and copy your elected representatives.
Is there any theory or explanation why this happens?
"Third party apps" is totally vague, what third party app could stop you from dialing an emergency number? And even if such apps exist (or even are common) is it not a huge design flaw by itself, which the manufacturer has to remedy?
Google Pixel phones pose an unacceptable safety risk to vulnerable Americans. This product should be recalled and future Google phone products should be refused certification until they document and enact a plan to do QA. And no, “engineers write their own unit tests” does not count as QA for safety-critical software.
I luckily don’t own one, but if I did I’d be reporting it to every regulator I could find. https://www.saferproducts.gov/
I've seen many reports of this on Pixel phones but I experienced something very similar on another Android phone (it was either Moto G5 or OnePlus One): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29494820
Most of the discussion here is related to 911-specific bugs in Pixel. But there's also generic cellular communications bugs, and based on what I see on Reddit it's widely experienced but not well understood. The symptom I see is nothing cellular works sometimes until I put the phone in airplane mode and back again. Networking software bug? Problem with the cellular tower? I have no idea. But it seems very common on Pixel 6. I probably won't buy another Google made phone because of it.
Maybe this is a 'straw man', but this is what I refer to when I say I prefer iPhones for their reliability and stability, or at least what I perceive to be more reliable than most android phones. The closest issue I can recall on iPhone was that issue where saying some nonsense to siri caused an erroneous dialing of 911.
I get it, this is sorta a one off thing, but it irks me when super basic functionality of the phone is unstable, such as making a literal phone call.
i'm REALLY surprised that this is still a problem, especially after the last 911 fiasco (the one where Teams was preventing users from dialing 911 due to call routing)
it feels like android in general has had issues with 911/112. i remember cyanogenmod ROMs (when that was a thing) having issues as well.
I used to be REALLY into modding / jailbreaking / rooting / installing custom ROMs on android phones, until I witnessed a car accident, tried to call 911 on my iirc galaxy s3, only for it to crash. Luckily my friend was able to call, but I tried again a couple times later and sure enough, dialing 911 on whatever ROM I had simply crashed the phone.
As much as I miss having root on my phone, I'm never taking the risk again. Being able to use payment features is a nice extra plus I guess.
[+] [-] edent|3 years ago|reply
We'd test, send a report back, wait a few weeks, get a new firmware, test again, repeat until everything worked. It took months. That was fine when phones weren't expected to be updated by users.
But when more modern phones arrived with flashable firmware, customers couldn't stand the delays associated with testing. They'd see a new firmware had been released and complained that the mobile network operators were delaying progress, dragging our feet, deliberately depriving customers of something cool.
The fact was, operators very often didn't certify the firmware because it contained *dangerous* bugs. I'm sure there was also a cost element - why pay to re-test a phone that you're no longer selling? - but that wasn't the primary driver.
Well, the manufacturers and customers "won". If you buy a phone through your network, it probably has a network-certified firmware blob. If not, you're at the mercy of the manufacturer.
[+] [-] izacus|3 years ago|reply
Testing is one thing, but in my first hand experience, many carriers used this "testing" as a convenient way to block phone updates without preloaded bloatware preferring their services or apps they were paid to put on the phones.
[+] [-] moffkalast|3 years ago|reply
I'm not sure why it would be on the network to test devices anyway, it's not like every net card needs to be approved by ICANN or something. There should be standards to adhere to, if those are breached on either end, fines should follow.
[+] [-] WrtCdEvrydy|3 years ago|reply
It was considered the utmost priority for a call to 911 to be clear enough for the other side to hear that you are an employee at a testing facility verifying that the device does work and the other person can hear you and NOT dispatch emergency services....
Cops/EMTs show up, your firmware is junk.
[+] [-] ilyt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Marsymars|3 years ago|reply
Let the network operators continue to certify phones, like hardware manufacturers do with hard drives, memory, etc., dimmer manufacturers do with LEDs, etc.
Make the certification tests, steps and costs transparent to both device manufacturers and the public.
[+] [-] dcow|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] RicoElectrico|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robertlagrant|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sandos|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] thih9|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] trasz2|3 years ago|reply
Apple preventing network operators from breaking their software on purpose was a huge step forward.
[+] [-] unknown|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] progval|3 years ago|reply
Why do customers care about the firmware version?
[+] [-] MrStonedOne|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] mort96|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crooked-v|3 years ago|reply
> If you're logged out, launching Microsoft Teams 10 times will result in 10 duplicate PhoneAccounts from Teams clogging your phone. Teams shouldn't do this, and Microsoft's update stopped Teams from doing this, but a bunch of duplicate PhoneAccounts also shouldn't be enough to bring Android's phone system to its knees.
> Next bug: when picking a PhoneAccount to run the emergency call through, [...] it's possible for this to result in an integer overflow or underflow, and now the phone subsystem is going to crash.
> A third bug in this mess is that Microsoft Teams does not even register itself as an emergency call handler.
> An update is not arriving for the Pixel 6 yet. Google's newest flagship is going though a bit of an update crisis at the moment. The December 2021 update was pulled due to unrelated "mobile connectivity issues" (phone calls don't work). While Google scrambles to fix everything, the next Pixel 6 update with this 911 fix is due in "late January." Until then, it's normal to be on the November patch. Both of Google's "early January" and "late January" patch timelines seem incredibly slow for a bug that could cause users to literally die.
If the OP article is correct, then apparently this still hasn't actually been fixed yet.
[+] [-] dm319|3 years ago|reply
My favourite devices have been more alternative. E90 running symbian, which was fairly 'open' for its time - I could install any software, proper multitasking. The N900 also, full linux system, great phone. But then the apps I find useful, are often not available for that platform.
At the moment I'm on Pixel, which has been a good balance between being well supported, while still fairly open. I can sideload apps, run a linux distro in the form of termux. As a bonus the camera is great. I have to remind myself that while it might not quite compare to iphones in terms of refinement and hardware, I do at least have more freedom on the platform, and it's easy to take that for granted until you lose it.
[+] [-] vbezhenar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 2OEH8eoCRo0|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] theCrowing|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] soverance|3 years ago|reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/ProjectFi/comments/9ijq9p/911_probl...
[+] [-] fbdab103|3 years ago|reply
I hate so much about the Apple ecosystem, but screw Google. If it is not a KPI product promotion package, evidently it is not worth the time.
[+] [-] cube00|3 years ago|reply
They do not care, people need to stop trusting their lives to this company.
[+] [-] mahathu|3 years ago|reply
How old is this story? The news report is from 2 days ago, but surely in 2022 the person filming the TikTok video wouldn't call a Pixel 6 a "brand new $1,000 Google phone"?
[+] [-] Caporal|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jakub_g|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nsteel|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Marsymars|3 years ago|reply
Buy a Pixel Watch! I’m sure emergency dialling won’t be broken on both the watch and phone at the same time!
But in seriousness, I personally just accept that cell phones aren’t a bulletproof way of accessing emergency services. At any point in time, my phone could be out of service, out of battery, dropped and broken, unconnected due to a network outage, etc. An emergency services bug is a qualitative difference, not a quantitative one. I qualitatively increase my odds of being able to access emergency services by running redundant systems - I have a VoIP landline, my partner has a cell phone with a different OS/mobile network than me, I carry a PLB if I’m in the wild. (I plan on getting an LTE-capable watch at some point - the Pixel Watch is quite unappealing for the price though.) (Will probably switch from PLB to sat messenger when the battery on this expires, which will double as an emergency service contact backup.)
[+] [-] jerlam|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ChoHag|3 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] exabrial|3 years ago|reply
But here you know what worked really well? Google tracking me all over the Internet… that never once failed!
[+] [-] wholinator2|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ars|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Animats|3 years ago|reply
If the FCC went after Google on this, they could probably win claiming clear legislative intent to cover all the cases, and that a third party who insinuates themselves into the call chain has the same liability as the carrier. File a formal complaint with the FCC, and copy your elected representatives.
[1] https://www.911.gov/issues/legislation-and-policy/kari-s-law...
[+] [-] constantcrying|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vpt|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] n8cpdx|3 years ago|reply
I luckily don’t own one, but if I did I’d be reporting it to every regulator I could find. https://www.saferproducts.gov/
[+] [-] hopfog|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NelsonMinar|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] puyoxyz|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lsajdn872he|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djhworld|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] p1mrx|3 years ago|reply
This entire class of problems wouldn't exist if anyone could run an integration test.
[+] [-] GrabbinD33ze69|3 years ago|reply
I get it, this is sorta a one off thing, but it irks me when super basic functionality of the phone is unstable, such as making a literal phone call.
[+] [-] canbus|3 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nunez|3 years ago|reply
it feels like android in general has had issues with 911/112. i remember cyanogenmod ROMs (when that was a thing) having issues as well.
[+] [-] komali2|3 years ago|reply
As much as I miss having root on my phone, I'm never taking the risk again. Being able to use payment features is a nice extra plus I guess.