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Pixel owners report problems after installing January 2024 Google Play update

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Re: Pixel owners report problems after installing January 2024 Google Play update

#71

Post by jacquesm »

lacoolj wrote: post #51

Title is super misleading. I have 3 different pixels, all different versions (4, 5a, 7a) and none of them are "unusable" after the update. I'm sure others are having issues, but this isn't something that's bricking everyone's phones.

With three phones and a one-in-eight chance of being unaffected (assuming 50% for each phone) that still leaves a very large number of phones out there that are potentially affected. 100's of millions of devices. The article is pretty clear that it doesn't seem to affect every phone, but that there are numerous complaints.

I'm always imagining 'Some' in front of headlines like these unless it says 'All'.

Re: Pixel owners report problems after installing January 2024 Google Play update

#73

Post by sideshowb »

jacquesm wrote: post #66
lnxg33k1 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can already see the storm of people saying that making companies liable for the software that costs consumers money is going to kill hobbyists, because we are just casualties waiting to give everyone money without any expected right

I have a very simple solution for that: you get to choose: you are either the provider of commercial software and accept liability for your product or you have to open source it.

So obviously open source software for proprietary hardware is treated as, er, ..?

Re: Pixel owners report problems after installing January 2024 Google Play update

#74

Post by iopq »

cantours wrote: post #30
jacek wrote: post #3

That's not the first story like this. It seems like more and more often the QA is done by users who have not signed up for it. Why can't a multibillion company do a proper QA?

You can only acquire billions of dollars if you cut corners and cheat as much as possible.

This isn't true, there are a ton of companies that make lots of money while not being pieces of shit

AMD is pretty good at having open source drivers, supporting Linux and Wayland, working with Framework to make an upgradable GPU in laptops.

Re: Pixel owners report problems after installing January 2024 Google Play update

#75

Post by green-eclipse »

seatac76 wrote: post #44

It was stuff like this that made me switch to iPhone. The notable ones were the December bug and them breaking SMS. What sort of testing they use is beyond me.

iPhones have plenty of issues too, I've experienced my fair share, as have others. Technology always has bugs:

https://discussions.apple.com/community/iphone

Re: Pixel owners report problems after installing January 2024 Google Play update

#76

Post by jacquesm »

csdvrx wrote: post #63
jacquesm wrote: post #47

Ah, another case of OTA murder of perfectly good devices. You have to wonder at what point regulators will step in to ensure that companies end up liable for updates that effectively cost consumers money. Updates should be to make devices safer and better, never worse. One of the devices in our house has been nagging me since forever to update and I'm just about 99% sure that if I do allow it to update I'll end up re…

I've posted a small summary below, with links to consistent reports of this happening + a software course of action to unbrick the phones. It's totally on google who's refusing to release the QPST files. It's creating ewaste for no acceptable reason. Hopefully, someone will leak the QPST files to allow a restore from the Qualcomm EDL firehose mode.

Nice sleuthing! It's incredible to me that there is no bullet proof recovery mode for this, even something as dumb as an Arduino can recover from almost every form of abuse.

Re: Pixel owners report problems after installing January 2024 Google Play update

#77

Post by e12e »

> The issue is being reported by owners of numerous Pixel models, including the Google Pixel 5, 6, 6a, 7, 7a, 8, and 8 Pro, suggesting that it isn't confined to a particular hardware architecture.

> The root cause is unknown but is likely a software issue with the January 2024 Play system update that Google hasn't pinpointed or fixed yet.

> If you are still on an older update (last was November 1, 2023), it is recommended to stay on it and postpone applying the January 2024 update until the situation clears up.

> In the case of Pixels, it appears that Google performed a staged roll-out of the January 2024 Play system updates, so not every Pixel owner has received the problematic update yet.

Re: Pixel owners report problems after installing January 2024 Google Play update

#78

Post by judge2020 »

rconti wrote: post #49
newprint wrote: post #26

Pixel owner here. Lately my phone been very slow or acting out. That explains it. Last year or few years ago, Google released update that broke Bluetooth on Pixels. Google's team released the update, broke things, went out for extended Christmas break and fixed things a few months later. I'm not fan of the Apple phones and the fact that they cost a fortune, but I don't recall them putting out hardware breaking update…

I'm sure someone will point out breaking iPhone updates that have happened in the past, but I've never been hit by one. Bad things happen, I think Apple is just REALLY aggressive about pulling updates that break things to limit the impact. That's the most important thing, IMO. Well, that and a fix for the people who got screwed.

True, no update process is perfect. My anecdote is with the Wallet in iOS 17 - suddenly, for some reason, I could not add any new cards to my Wallet, even after removing existing cards. No matter what I tried, adding it took approximately 10 minutes before it errored with "unable to contact your bank". I did a DFU wipe-restore and restored my phone from an iCloud backup, but I still could not add any cards. The only thing that fixed this was restoring my phone and not restoring from a backup, meaning I had to set everything up again; thankfully, it did fix the issue and I was able to add all of my cards back to my wallet.

I have to imagine some update corrupted my years-old Wallet database. There is this screen[0] that should pop up if the Secure Element runs out of space, but I wasn't near the limit on cards, so I don't think this was the issue.

0: https://x.com/TapDownUnder/status/1750022004009586908?s=20

Re: Pixel owners report problems after installing January 2024 Google Play update

#79

Post by jacquesm »

sideshowb wrote: post #73
jacquesm wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a very simple solution for that: you get to choose: you are either the provider of commercial software and accept liability for your product or you have to open source it.

So obviously open source software for proprietary hardware is treated as, er, ..?

I don't know what you're getting at, that's clearly spelled out already. But in case you didn't get it: that's without liability for the manufacturer because you have the choice to bypass them. Presumably such a situation wouldn't occur very often because 'proprietary hardware' with 'open source software' wouldn't be proprietary for very long. The software would tell you all you need to know about how it works.

Re: Pixel owners report problems after installing January 2024 Google Play update

#80

Post by sam2426679 »

blibble wrote: post #2

Android is just awful in terms of reliability I find it hard to believe anyone working for Google on Android actually uses an Android phone as their personal device I suffered all of: phone reboots 50% of the time using the camera, assistant won't answer sometimes, phone calls lock up the phone, alarm clock randomly doesn't work, it just goes on and on I had the original Android phone with Android 1.0 and had bought…

Same here; had a Pixel 5a with Google Fi. The 1 year old Pixel randomly died one day, totally bricked. Google phone support requires them calling you (after you request it online), and the browser-based “Fi phone” was unable to receive calls from Google phone support. No other callers had this issue. When I finally got in touch with them via my wife’s phone, they wanted me to drive 1.5 hours outside of SF for a phone diagnostic. I said no thanks and switched to iPhone with AT&T.
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