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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

#181

Post by 0_____0 »

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.

Same issue for me! After my previous Pixel bricked due to a flash chip wearing out (wtf?) I'm swearing off the Pixel line.

I'm in the Northeast USA on T-Mobile. You?

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

#182

Post by db48x »

numpad0 wrote: post #119
denysvitali wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

The faraday cage in a microwave is good for its purpose, but not good enough at blocking cell phone bands. They would need something slightly more expensive, anywhere from $1000 to $50k depending on how fancy they wanted to be. Of course Google should have no problem affording any of that, but these details do matter.

I suspect that the problem must be more complex than a bug in just the phone or the OS; for one thing, the problem is intermittent and doesn’t affect every phone. Still, the lack of action from the FCC is disturbing.

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

#184

Post by mlyle »

numpad0 wrote: post #177
mlyle wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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...

Our primary concern is dialer crashing! I don't understand why you're trying to shift the blame away from Google. That's just stupid.

> Our primary concern is dialer crashing!

Yes, so being able to use the phone UI is important for qualitative testing.

> I don't understand why you're trying to shift the blame away from Google. That's just stupid.

I feel like you didn't read my comment. I stated that a screened room isn't prohibitively expensive, but can't be delivered for the suggested $10k. In another comment, I said "Society spends a few billion dollars a year on E911 and related infrastructure. To have faith in it eroded because of a little bit of slipshod validation by phone vendors is a false economy."

Why isn't it possible to have nuanced discussions-- to condemn Google's failure here, but also to suggest that the capital expense to give people realistic test environments is probably higher than others are suggesting?

Frankly, you're being abrasive.

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

#185

Post by bisby »

zja wrote: post #123
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…

> the only way to test is... to call 911 You should be able to use 933 to test emergency services. https://support.bandwidth.com/hc/en-us/articles/210291778-Th...

Completely tangential to testing that the service connects: I have a young child and we've done practice "what do you do in an emergency" things, but are there any "fake 911" type services where a young child can call to practice a 911 call, so they can experience how the operator will talk to them, so in a real emergency it would be a bit less jarring?

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

#186

Post by amelius »

numpad0 wrote: post #85
rkagerer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Jeez - can't dial 911, randomly dials 911. I don't understand why these devices can't even do the most core feature of a phone properly. This will sound crass but the development teams (right up to CEO's) should be dragged out to the gallows and flogged. If it was my product I would have made damn sure the 911 experience was perfect before shipping, and not rested for a minute until any bugs were solidly quashed - up…

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.

Yeah, 911 calls should be implemented in an entirely different hardware subsystem, just like the flight control system of an airplane doesn't run on the same hardware as the entertainment systems.

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

#187

Post by J_Shelby_J »

numpad0 wrote: post #86
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.

Radio certifications should be suspended if there are protocol conformance issues, I think there are precedents to it.

We need to introduce a stochastic manslaughter charge.

I have trouble believing this hasn’t caused a death. And someone at google knows about it. They should be held responsible.

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

#188

Post by larntz »

0_____0 wrote: post #181
larntz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Same issue for me! After my previous Pixel bricked due to a flash chip wearing out (wtf?) I'm swearing off the Pixel line. I'm in the Northeast USA on T-Mobile. You?

I'm in South Florida.

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

#189

Post by johndhi »

guraf wrote: post #179
johndhi wrote: post #171

In my experience (which is about as relevant to this topic as one can imagine), regulatory-required features in software always get built in really shitty ways. These are some of the reasons I've seen for why: -the regulation isn't sufficiently flexible to allow the company to build it in a way that makes the most sense for their system -for the same reason testing, user research and feedback largely don't matter -th…

If what you said was true, we'd see the same poor quality in Samsung or Apple phones. Yet we don't.

Those companies are a little more like traditional hardware companies than Google who is more of a software company.

We do see poor e911 implementation at other software companies (twilio, five9, etc)

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

#190

Post by larntz »

beart wrote: post #161
larntz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yep! I work from home and use WiFi calling. When I leave my house is usually when I have the issue.

Sometimes it'll work fine for a while after leaving and a few hours later I notice I don't have service.

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