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Some Pixel owners still can't dial 911 during an emergency

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Re: Some Pixel owners still can't dial 911 during an emergency

#111

Post by Kwpolska »

shawnz wrote: post #74
nneonneo wrote: post #6

This article is about an incident from just last month, but the fact that there are 20+ failure reports over just Feb 2022-Jan 2023 ( https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/y039zn/i_compi... ), across multiple Pixel models, is insane. There’s something seriously wrong here.

Is there any data on how often this occurs with other brands, or what the failure rate was (i.e. how many attempts to call 911 succeeded in that time?) Otherwise 20+ reports certainly sounds bad but I don't really have a perspective on how bad it is. It could very well be that 20 failures across a year is within the expected failure rate due to unavoidable transient network issues.

The author of the linked Reddit post was unable to find anything for other Android brands, and only three cases across ten years for iPhones.

Re: Some Pixel owners still can't dial 911 during an emergency

#112

Post by leesalminen »

MereInterest wrote: post #53
anthonyryan1 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it's possible the power button is getting bumped repeatedly in your pocket. You could search your Android settings, and make sure "Emergency SOS" is turned off.

It’s also possible that there’s a hardware failure that is making the power button erroneously report button presses, leading to the Emergency SOS. This happened to me on a Pixel 3, which resulted in repeated calls to 911 with no user input. * Can’t power it off for the night, because the flaky power button turns it back on. * Can’t pull the SIM card, because emergency calls don’t require a SIM card to connect. * Can…

That would be the point where I take a hammer to the phone.

Re: Some Pixel owners still can't dial 911 during an emergency

#113

Post by numpad0 »

denysvitali wrote: post #90
numpad0 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can hallucinate couple different explanations for that: - Modern software is way too overcomplicated to take seriously. - 911 is handled too specially, leading to oversights by implementers. - Feature importance to you has nothing to do with implementation difficulties. etc.

Yes, I think the real problem is #2. The only reliable way to test 911 features is a test lab, to which the average engineer doesn't have access to. On top of that, calling 911 isn't exactly as placing a normal call - so the only way to test is... to call 911. Again, a test lab should help towards these things, but I doubt Google has one accessible to the average engineer working on the dialer. Plus, they most likely…

You don't need a full concert hall to test 911, the simplest LTE test equipment can be just couple sandwiches big. They're also not expensive at Google scale. It does concern me that there were anecdotal posts that read to me like that, developing firmwares and not blatantly violating basic assumptions and principles and core premises of Google MDM cannot occur simultaneously. If I somehow had to, I would bet that that to be on the path to the root cause. I mean, a lot of software jockeys have to be explained that IP address isn't assigned to a CPU socket.

Re: Some Pixel owners still can't dial 911 during an emergency

#115

Post by denysvitali »

numpad0 wrote: post #113
denysvitali wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, I think the real problem is #2. The only reliable way to test 911 features is a test lab, to which the average engineer doesn't have access to. On top of that, calling 911 isn't exactly as placing a normal call - so the only way to test is... to call 911. Again, a test lab should help towards these things, but I doubt Google has one accessible to the average engineer working on the dialer. Plus, they most likely…

You don't need a full concert hall to test 911, the simplest LTE test equipment can be just couple sandwiches big. They're also not expensive at Google scale. It does concern me that there were anecdotal posts that read to me like that, developing firmwares and not blatantly violating basic assumptions and principles and core premises of Google MDM cannot occur simultaneously. If I somehow had to, I would bet that th…

You need a special room as well - you can't accept that someone near your building might end up having his 911 call routed through your test infrastructure.

Alternatively, I think you can somehow connect the device antenna to your equipment, so that the signal doesn't even have to be transmitted over the air (or at the scale of a femtocell). Still, rather "expensive" to setup in multiple locations for just a team that develops a dialer.

Additionally, you'd have to test this across multiple OS versions, and devices. Still doable, but most likely not incentivized by the managers at Google

Re: Some Pixel owners still can't dial 911 during an emergency

#116

Post by CatWChainsaw »

koheripbal wrote: post #19
shrubble wrote: post #9

It shouldn't be allowed to be sold and Google should be facing fines for each day the functionality is missing, assuming it is a software problem.

[flagged]

That tends to happen when the party to be penalized shows how much it doesn't give a shit until it starts to hemorrhage money, because fines are just a cost of doing business. So let the blood flow.

Re: Some Pixel owners still can't dial 911 during an emergency

#117

Post by hackmiester »

withinboredom wrote: post #28
NonAnonCoward wrote: post #14

My experience has been Pixel phones suck for calls in general. I know of 3 people with Pixel 3As that intermittently can’t receive calls. Often it takes 2-3 calls to these people in order to get 1 to go through. Setting the phones to prefer 4G has so far fixed the problem most reliably but the whole calling stack on pixel phones needs some work IMO.

This is one thing I miss about the old Windows Phones (Nokia/Metro interface sucked, but damn) because it was a phone first, computer second. Most phones these days are computers (or cameras) first, phones last. For example, the WP would progressively disable things to keep the phone on for as long as possible. At 2am, after a night out, I'd usually be the only one who had a working phone to call a cab (pre-uber days…

BlackBerry had this too. May it rest in peace.

Re: Some Pixel owners still can't dial 911 during an emergency

#118

Post by sdo72 »

My Pixel journey from 1 to 6A ended a few months ago, I can't no longer trust Pixel phones. Even though they seem very fast and responsive at first, they're not reliable in many situations like calling 911, getting Wifi signal, receiving calls, ... All of Pixel phones I got since the 1st version have some kind of major issues. I trusted Google with the software and I thought I could continue, but I had to switch to iPhones.

Re: Some Pixel owners still can't dial 911 during an emergency

#119

Post by numpad0 »

denysvitali wrote: post #115
numpad0 wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need a full concert hall to test 911, the simplest LTE test equipment can be just couple sandwiches big. They're also not expensive at Google scale. It does concern me that there were anecdotal posts that read to me like that, developing firmwares and not blatantly violating basic assumptions and principles and core premises of Google MDM cannot occur simultaneously. If I somehow had to, I would bet that th…

You need a special room as well - you can't accept that someone near your building might end up having his 911 call routed through your test infrastructure. Alternatively, I think you can somehow connect the device antenna to your equipment, so that the signal doesn't even have to be transmitted over the air (or at the scale of a femtocell). Still, rather "expensive" to setup in multiple locations for just a team tha…

I don't see why it would be expensive, for no other than Google, to set up a microwave oven with a factory rooted phone and a femtocell inside on ~dozen locations worldwide. There's no special legal or financial complexities in doing that.

And selling phones that can't pass certification is just irresponsible. If you can't make a product work, you're free to be responsible and cancel a product. It's on Google to do businesses legally.

Re: Some Pixel owners still can't dial 911 during an emergency

#120

Post by bleachedsleet »

denysvitali wrote: post #109
philipov wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Again, a test lab should help towards these things, but I doubt Google has one accessible to the average engineer working on the dialer. And why not? It seems like the real real problem is #4: Management doesn't take seriously people's need to reach emergency services because it's not a profit center.

A test lab is a room that is completely isolated from the outside (and in a way that the RF doesn't leak outside of the premises) where you can do these kind of experiments. Considering the amount of teams working on the Google Dialer, and the fact that they might be distributed across multiple cities / countries - this sounds very expensive.

Linus Tech Tips has one complete with an isolated private 5G network inside. I’m sure Google could manage.
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