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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

#231

Post by paulddraper »

ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #226
paulddraper wrote: post #222

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Who lost their engineering license from Firestone tires? Toyota gas pedals? Hasbro easy-bake oven? Graco high chairs? Stop trotting out the same baseless comment over and over.

In my country, engineers are legally responsible for their work to the point where insurance is required to do engineering. And yes, engineers that are negligent are held responsible. Just because you're ignorant doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Certainly liability insurance exists.

Let me know if find answers to my questions.

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

#232

Post by dvngnt_ »

rkagerer wrote: post #76
lopkeny12ko wrote: post #65

Funny, because I have the opposite problem. My Pixel dials 911 out of random and I always have to race to disconnect the call. Just last night my Pixel Watch started ringing out of random while I was eating dinner and it said it was dialing 911. I saw a phone call pop up on my Pixel 6 phone but fortunately canceled it before it connected. My watch didn't even tell me why it dialed 911, and once I disconnected the cal…

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…

> If it was my product I would have made damn sure the 911 experience was perfect before shipping

not absolving Google, but this is easier said than done

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

#233

Post by ThrowawayTestr »

paulddraper wrote: post #231
ThrowawayTestr wrote: post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my country, engineers are legally responsible for their work to the point where insurance is required to do engineering. And yes, engineers that are negligent are held responsible. Just because you're ignorant doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

Certainly liability insurance exists. Let me know if find answers to my questions.

You know any software engineers with liability insurance? Also, you would have learned of many examples had you gone to engineering school, we have whole courses dedicated to laws and ethics.

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

#234

Post by kmlx »

prmoustache wrote: post #228
TerrifiedMouse wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A few months later I’m surprised you kept the phone. I would have gotten a new phone if I discovered my current one couldn’t dial 911 properly.

Well, how many times in your life do you call 911? I am in my forties and I maybe used my local equivalent 3 times and in every occurence someone else could have made the call. And I've only used my mobile phone since my late 20's, it is not like I buy smartphones for emergency purposes.

you only need it to fail once…

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

#236

Post by stock_toaster »

guraf wrote: post #175
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…

In any other field, engineers would be held responsible and after so many "mistakes" they would lose their license. Software engineers will fight tooth and nails to keep their privilege is being called engineers whilst having none of the responsibility when it comes to the harm they're causing.

In most fields with “real engineers” do they also get told by management to ship things broken and/or with arbitrary deadlines, or do they have the ability to push back on things, with some legal recourse or means to avoid the threat of losing their jobs if they say no to something, that software engineers lack?

I don’t think things will change until corporate management changes (via being forced to, or otherwise).

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

#237

Post by mlyle »

michaelt wrote: post #230
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...

You can get things like [1] - an RF blocking box with a window and attached RF-blocking gloves. This equipment is not at all exotic. And if you don't like that option - you can also place test calls to 911 [2] by calling their non-emergency number and arranging a time. It would be easy to perform a once-a-month test call. [1] https://jretest.com/product/jre-1812f-forensics-analysis-enc... [2] https://www.911.gov/call…

What it seems like they really need is some general black-box testing time to try and better identify what is going on, along with looking at logs from devices of users who had the problem.

A screened room with a few devices and a simulator seems like a good resource to have, and it's a reasonable thing to procure at a center or two if they don't have it. It just costs several tens of thousands, not $10k.

It seems like at this point 911 usually works on Pixel, and there's probably even good unit test and automated integration test of a lot of the components-- prearranged test calls with a given carrier's 911 impl isn't likely to fix it. But "usually" isn't good enough: Google needs to actually figure out what's going on, no matter what.

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

#238

Post by milosmns »

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.

I remember from my days building SIP clients that a lot of carriers support 933, which is exactly what you're asking about. You can try googling a bit to see if your carrier supports it.

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

#239

Post by milosmns »

yolovoe wrote: post #77

I used to have a Pixel 2 XL and then later a Pixel 5a. Went through them really fast as the hardware was pretty bad and the phone would just decide to stop turning on at some point. Same thing happened to a relative I gave a Pixel 5a. Phone didn't last a year. Don't get me started on the Pixel buds. I got tired of contacting customer support for replacements. That's when I decided not to buy hardware from Google agai…

Another anecdotal example here:

Nexus 4, Pixel 2 XL, Pixel 4 XL, Pixel 6 Pro – never had any issues whatsoever, all phones still alive and kicking at my grandparents' places. Yes, most of them tied to the wall now... but hey, they're fine for showing some photos and displaying current time or setting alarms.

Interestingly, I also used Samsung's Note 9 and 10+, iPhone 12, iPhone 14 Pro Max – daily, also with no issues... other than disliking Samsung's software.

(I was/am doing a lot of mobile work so I test a lot of phones)

After years of doing this kind of testing, it's hard for me to believe that the entire batches of phones are so fundamentally broken... I'd rather bet on software issues, but who knows.

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

#240

Post by matchbok »

kwhitefoot wrote: post #205
matchbok wrote: post #114

Android is such a mess - this should have criminal penalties. Anyone working in the Android SDK knows how poorly designed it is.

What does this have to do with Android? Other Android mobiles do not have any difficulty making emergency calls.

They certainly have in the past. There are core issues with how Android deals with phone apps and prioritization. Quite a few threads on here about previous 911 issues.
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