Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

androidauthority.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 275 posts

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

#161

Post by beart »

larntz wrote: post #33
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.

I have a pixel 6 pro and this has been my experience since they day I got it. I even had it replaced and still have to reset the cellular modem several times per week because I get the no service `!`. Starting to believe it is a T-Mobile service issue in my area. Previously had a pixel 2 on Verizon and never had a problem. Planning to leave T-Mobile in the near future.

I have a 6A on T-Mobile. Exact same issue for me.

Do you use wifi calling when you are at home? It has been my experience that T-Mobile WiFi calling is absolutely terrible, and I've oftentimes wondered if something in the software "locks" into WiFi instead of switching to cellular data, until the phone is rebooted.

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

#162

Post by numpad0 »

mlyle wrote: post #157
evilduck wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Building a Faraday cage is an afternoon woodworking project. You can build them in your garage or bedroom with hand tools if you wanted. You don’t even need a huge room, a portable phone booth sized space could be mass produced and delivered on site. A Faraday Booth might take a few dozen square meters of copper mesh and some basic lumber, drywall and finishing efforts. If it took more than $10k per office I’d be sho…

It shouldn't be too expensive, but before you put in equipment and pretend to be the phone network, you need to make sure that you're hitting regulatory limits on the amount of RF leaking out. Doing a good enough job to hit that above a gigahertz--- including things like conducted RF, and validating with measurements-- is gonna cost a bit more than you describe.

[1]. $1k, -95dB to 3GHz, in stock, manufacturer standard I/O plates sold separately. I think there's zero room for hypotheticals and challenges to talk about setting these up if you ask not webdevs but actual phone people.

1: https://jretest.com/product/jre-0912/

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

#163

Post by mook »

lionkor wrote: post #21

When my OnePlus 8T lags, I sometimes press the power button a few times, because I'm impatient and I'm trying to get the screen to turn on. Pressing the power button 5 times dials the emergency service number by default, so I've almost called emergency services a few times already. I usually manage to cancel it before it dials, but wow.

FWIW, you can disable that in settings (both the power button thing, as well as the auto-dial if you prefer to get to that page via buttons). At least, if the 8T is similar to other phones.

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

#164

Post by yardstick »

RicoElectrico wrote: post #105

There should be some kind of test number twin of 911 that works exactly the same (without SIM, supplying E911 data), but just plays a pre-recorded message optionally with some "debug" info.

Maybe, but you would still need to test that 911 itself works.

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

#165

Post by yardstick »

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…

I believe some places you provide emergency services the number you will be calling from to test, so they can handle it appropriately.

Ultimately with a system like 911, you will always have to do final testing on the real deal. Because this is just too serious to get wrong.

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

#166

Post by bigstrat2003 »

WesolyKubeczek wrote: post #94

Sometimes people ask me, why do I use an iPhone when Android phones are so much better in this or that respect. And the thing is, none of iPhones I had my hands on (since 4S maybe) have never failed me as phones . When I need to place or receive a call, the call is placed or received. No shenanigans with sound, microphone, connections. If there is a connection problem, I can be 100% sure it's the carrier. With Androi…

> And the thing is, none of iPhones I had my hands on (since 4S maybe) have never failed me as phones. When I need to place or receive a call, the call is placed or received. No shenanigans with sound, microphone, connections. If there is a connection problem, I can be 100% sure it's the carrier.

Just saying, I've used only Android phones since 2009 or so, and I've never once had a problem with the phone functionality. It's not like this is some problem with Android in general.

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

#167

Post by mlyle »

numpad0 wrote: post #162
mlyle wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It shouldn't be too expensive, but before you put in equipment and pretend to be the phone network, you need to make sure that you're hitting regulatory limits on the amount of RF leaking out. Doing a good enough job to hit that above a gigahertz--- including things like conducted RF, and validating with measurements-- is gonna cost a bit more than you describe.

[1]. $1k, -95dB to 3GHz, in stock, manufacturer standard I/O plates sold separately. I think there's zero room for hypotheticals and challenges to talk about setting these up if you ask not webdevs but actual phone people. 1: https://jretest.com/product/jre-0912/

Who's the person who crawls into the tiny box and makes sure the dialer UI is doing the right thing, given that is what our primary concern is?

We've been talking about the cost of making a screened room. "Turnkey" ones cost about $20-50k, but you're going to pay contractors a fair bit beyond that. Not to mention whatever equipment you're putting inside.

https://www.ramayes.com/Refurbished_Radio_Frequency_Shielded...

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

#168

Post by readams »

covercash wrote: post #70
user_7832 wrote: post #3

It's really absurd how such a problem still exists. Couldn't a separate method be used for emergency calling? For example drop to 3g, don't use the dialer app but a separate "emergency" app.

It would be great if when 911 is dialed the phone dropped into a “black box” state where all unnecessary functionality is suspended to maximize battery and signal. It could alert emergency contacts w/ location pings, start recording voice and video, and go into a heightened security mode to avoid tampering.

No you definitely don't want the phone doing confusing and weird things during an emergency. You want it to behave in the way the user is accustomed.

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

#170

Post by thesis »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #169

Surely it is a legal requirement that mobile phones be able to call the emergency services? If it doesn't do that then surely a crime has been committed?

A crime? Not sure I agree in a isolated incident.

But I feel like it should be a crime to ignore a known issue like this.

Post reply on HN