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

Google broke telephony for many Nexus users

code.google.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

101–110 of 115 posts

Re: Google broke telephony for many Nexus users

#101

Post by raisedbyninjas »

callahad wrote: post #89
amelius wrote: post #45

Google also broke my bluetooth audio... :/ And they are not being very responsive about it on the issue tracker. And the silly thing is... it once worked! I feel like I should have never "upgraded" my Android version.

In what way is your bluetooth audio broken? If you're seeing frequent disconnects, switching from 5 GHz to 2.4 GHz WiFi seems to have resolved it on my Nexus 7. Which is utterly ridiculous, but hell, it works.

5.0 degraded the ability for google maps navigation voice prompts to work while other apps are playing bluetooth audio. It creates a lot of silence and cuts off parts of the audio.

Re: Google broke telephony for many Nexus users

#102

Post by drzaiusapelord »

noselasd wrote: post #93
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The real issue here is that GSM, MMS, etc are archaic and hard to code for. The industry's fight against VOIP seems to be the real issue here. Instead of all this complexity, why not just treat phones as data devices and voice is just another IP protocol that runs on them? I imagine the "shoddy workmanship" has a lot to do with carrier specific settings and vendor specific stuff that is difficult to code for properly…

I'm not sure why you assume a switch to VoIP will help in that regard - in practical terms that means the SIP protocol for the voice (and SMS) signalling. While SIP is going to be the way forward, the specs are really full of ambiguity and not that well though out features. Most commercial vendors of SIP servers include full scripting languages in order for the admins to "normalize" the protocol in order to try to sm…

SIP is software. What runs on my cellular modem and its stack is firmware written by yet another party.

If SIP app #474 is screwing up, I switch to SIP app #475. This all can be done in userland as an application. Changing out my GSM stack? Yeah, I can't do that.

Re: Google broke telephony for many Nexus users

#103

Post by actuary »

jmscharff2 wrote: post #34

I am looking at getting the Nexus 6 and its threads like this that make me think twice about leaving the iPhone. I prefer android, I love my nexus 7 but issues like this are the reason I left android to get the iPhone 5 from a Droid X2. Now, I thought if getting a Nexus google would support it more because my main issue with the Droid was that it was never updated...but now I am concerned.

Android is great but God help you if something breaks. Both of my Nexus phones stopped functioning after a year, and I know through very painful experience that after that point product support all but disappears. Presumably all of Google's good engineers move on to the next generation of products as soon as the last generation ships. In any case the pattern is pretty clear. If support is important to you, this is not a company you do business with.

Re: Google broke telephony for many Nexus users

#105

Post by drzaiusapelord »

danielvinson wrote: post #75
diminoten wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had accidentally moved $1,000 from the wrong bank account into Google Wallet, and called customer service to try and figure out what I should do, because there wasn't going to be $1,000 in the account I had selected, but Google Wallet was giving me access to the funds already. The CS rep that responded was a nice guy, but had no clue what to do. We started spitballing together some possible ideas, and I suggested t…

I used to work at Google in support. You were not talking to a random engineer - the support people are all dedicated support contractors. Most of the teams are all non-technical and the only thing they know about how the product works is from a two week training where most of the time is spent on learning how to avoid lawsuits.

How do people think google puts software engineers on the phone randomly? That's just an insane idea. I mean, these guys all make what 150k starting with 250k+ salaries not unheard of and you really expect their managers to go, "Oh btw, you're on helpdesk this week. Put on your headset and talk to clueless people for 8 hours today."

Re: Google broke telephony for many Nexus users

#106

Post by hokkos »

There has been 2 threads about Apple decreasing software quality, I found theses reports to be totally bogus. If there has been a piece of technology that is falling in quality it is Android, Lollipop is the worst update ever :

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=79729

https://code.google.com/p/android/issues/detail?id=79445

Re: Google broke telephony for many Nexus users

#107

Post by diminoten »

drzaiusapelord wrote: post #105
danielvinson wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used to work at Google in support. You were not talking to a random engineer - the support people are all dedicated support contractors. Most of the teams are all non-technical and the only thing they know about how the product works is from a two week training where most of the time is spent on learning how to avoid lawsuits.

How do people think google puts software engineers on the phone randomly? That's just an insane idea. I mean, these guys all make what 150k starting with 250k+ salaries not unheard of and you really expect their managers to go, "Oh btw, you're on helpdesk this week. Put on your headset and talk to clueless people for 8 hours today."

It was in The Internship, that's what put the idea in my head, and as far as I know it's in there because they do/did do that, with the idea being you get a better understanding of who you're writing features for if you get your questions from the horse's mouth occasionally.

Re: Google broke telephony for many Nexus users

#108

Post by gcb0 »

danielvinson wrote: post #100
gcb0 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

support people at Google is there only to fill regulation minimums.

The teams I was a part of most definitely were not just for minimums (Chromebook/Glass). Google has incredible support for their hardware products.

that's honestly awesome to hear.

my experience in the past made me avoid newer Google products because support in the past was non existent. last thing i bought was a nexus one. i for the bad touch screen (registers ghost touches after screen is on for a while) and i could either complain on forums and be ignored or start a return with htc that from the forums histories ended with a device on worse condition and save touch screen bug sent back...

Re: Google broke telephony for many Nexus users

#109

Post by toomuchtodo »

tdkl wrote: post #59
toomuchtodo wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Long time Android user here! (G2, Nexus One, Galaxy Nexus, Nexus 4). After several years of hoping Android would get its shit together, I switched to a 5S and got my wife an iPhone 6. I have minor quibbles: No Google Calendar App. Google service push notifications seem a tad slower on the iPhone. But the experience is just so much better. I am by no means a fan boi. I am a fan (as an infrastructure engineer with real…

Try Sunrise [1], which can use Google Calendar as backend and has push for updates. [1] https://sunrise.am

Thank you!

Re: Google broke telephony for many Nexus users

#110

Post by tsax »

darshan wrote: post #76
tsax wrote: post #56

Android Lollipop also broke the led indicator at the bottom of my Nexus 5. I can no longer count on it to reliably indicate if I have messages/emails pending on silent mode.

That's intentional. Lollipop no longer has silent mode; instead it has "no interruptions" mode, which considers the LED indicator an interruption. I suspect there are third-party apps that can do a pseudo-silent mode that may work for you.

Yeah I realize that and it's broken. There's clearly a use case that the LED served between ZERO interruptions and buzzing/ringing.
Post reply on HN