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Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

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Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#81

Post by tlb »

ilyt wrote: post #72
edent wrote: post #12

When I used to work for a large mobile network, we would spend ages testing the firmware of new devices. Even giants (at the time) like Nokia would release phones which couldn't dial the emergency services, or put out more than the legal limit of radiation, or were in other ways defective. We'd test, send a report back, wait a few weeks, get a new firmware, test again, repeat until everything worked. It took months.…

Wait, shouldn't be something like FCC certifying emission levels not some random mobile network operator ? Or at least company run by them as to not have to repeat test same thing over and over again ?

Emission levels are complicated. There isn't a particular threshold they have to be under. Rather, phones negotiate with the tower to use the minimum power needed to get their signal through, depending on their distance from the tower and other factors. Using lower power means less interference with other phones as well as increased battery life and less RF absorption by the user's head. This negotiation has a lot of parameters that vary between carriers, so carriers legitimately need to test that every model and version of phone works reliably on their network and doesn't just start blasting at full power sometimes, causing other calls to drop.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#82

Post by Sakos »

fallingknife wrote: post #59
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why they don't say it by name but the bug was originally found with MS Teams. "The issue is the result of an “unintended interaction” between Teams and Android, specifically when the users have the app installed but are not logged in to any account." [0] [0] https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-microsoft-team...

Wouldn't this be an easy fix? Just have any emergency number dialed automatically kill all 3rd party apps before sending the call.

Or just always hardcode the use of the built-in phone app for emergency numbers. That shouldn't be something that a third-party app can register for.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#83

Post by [deleted] »

edent wrote: post #12

When I used to work for a large mobile network, we would spend ages testing the firmware of new devices. Even giants (at the time) like Nokia would release phones which couldn't dial the emergency services, or put out more than the legal limit of radiation, or were in other ways defective. We'd test, send a report back, wait a few weeks, get a new firmware, test again, repeat until everything worked. It took months.…

[deleted]

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#84

Post by constantcrying »

fallingknife wrote: post #59
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure why they don't say it by name but the bug was originally found with MS Teams. "The issue is the result of an “unintended interaction” between Teams and Android, specifically when the users have the app installed but are not logged in to any account." [0] [0] https://www.androidauthority.com/google-pixel-microsoft-team...

Wouldn't this be an easy fix? Just have any emergency number dialed automatically kill all 3rd party apps before sending the call.

That should really not be neccessary and potentially a user might want to use third party applications during an emergency call. (Imagine having saved the medication a relative receives on your device)

The OS has near complete authority over the device. If a user dials an emergency number android has to choose to give it to a third party app and that should never happen.

(I am also not sure that it would be a fix at all. From the description above it seems like android would try to start Teams, even if it was closed.)

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#85

Post by sneak »

mort96 wrote: post #64
edent wrote: post #12

When I used to work for a large mobile network, we would spend ages testing the firmware of new devices. Even giants (at the time) like Nokia would release phones which couldn't dial the emergency services, or put out more than the legal limit of radiation, or were in other ways defective. We'd test, send a report back, wait a few weeks, get a new firmware, test again, repeat until everything worked. It took months.…

It's not like months-long delays to get security updates isn't also incredibly dangerous.

Life safety dangerous is different than "malware steals your nudes" dangerous.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#86

Post by Sakos »

fourthark wrote: post #77
onion2k wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google blames third party apps. I'm not going to suggest third parties can't screw with a phone and make it effectively unusable, but why isn't emergency calling a separate code path in the dialler app and OS that just ignores everything that third parties have done? It should be impossible to change the behaviour of that small bit of the phone. Don't fire any OS level events, don't call any callbacks, ignore any reg…

This link posted by crooked-v seems to explain why it was like that, and how it has been fixed. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-fixes-nightma...

> Next bug: when picking a PhoneAccount to run the emergency call through, Android goes through a complicated sorting process to figure out which account to use. The last step in this sort process, the tiebreaker, is sorting by hashcode. The hashcode comparison just subtracts one hashcode from the other. But just like that stupid Y2K22 Microsoft Exchange bug from the other day, it's possible for this to result in an integer overflow or underflow, and now the phone subsystem is going to crash.

This is horrifying and stupid and horrifyingly stupid.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#87

Post by mitchdoogle »

paganel wrote: post #70
crooked-v wrote: post #30

This article, dating back to January, lays it out pretty clearly: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-fixes-nightma... > If you're logged out, launching Microsoft Teams 10 times will result in 10 duplicate PhoneAccounts from Teams clogging your phone. Teams shouldn't do this, and Microsoft's update stopped Teams from doing this, but a bunch of duplicate PhoneAccounts also shouldn't be enough to bring Andro…

If I get this right, we have a $1+ trillion company not being able to build a basic functionality into their phones? (like "phone calls don't work" and the whole calling 911 issue). And, apparently, that was happening because of a shitty app built by another $1+ trillion company? In terms of innovation the US tech scene is toast with these dinosaurs.

Bugs happen everywhere, to everyone. The fact that it happened is not a surprise - the lack of an immediate fix is what is concerning

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#88

Post by ocdtrekkie »

moffkalast wrote: post #43
edent wrote: post #12

When I used to work for a large mobile network, we would spend ages testing the firmware of new devices. Even giants (at the time) like Nokia would release phones which couldn't dial the emergency services, or put out more than the legal limit of radiation, or were in other ways defective. We'd test, send a report back, wait a few weeks, get a new firmware, test again, repeat until everything worked. It took months.…

The way I see it, this just moves the responsibility for safety to the manufacturers instead of the network. It's on the specific company then to provide adequate QA for their firmware before they release updates, or it reflects badly on them. This fiasco for example, tells me to never buy a Google phone since they apparently don't test their devices properly. I'm not sure why it would be on the network to test devic…

This is probably like the fourth or fifth time issues calling 911 has come up for Pixel phones too. Google simply isn't capable of producing life-critical software.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#89

Post by Thaxll »

paganel wrote: post #70
crooked-v wrote: post #30

This article, dating back to January, lays it out pretty clearly: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/01/google-fixes-nightma... > If you're logged out, launching Microsoft Teams 10 times will result in 10 duplicate PhoneAccounts from Teams clogging your phone. Teams shouldn't do this, and Microsoft's update stopped Teams from doing this, but a bunch of duplicate PhoneAccounts also shouldn't be enough to bring Andro…

If I get this right, we have a $1+ trillion company not being able to build a basic functionality into their phones? (like "phone calls don't work" and the whole calling 911 issue). And, apparently, that was happening because of a shitty app built by another $1+ trillion company? In terms of innovation the US tech scene is toast with these dinosaurs.

Why people keep saying 1B+, 1T+ compagny, if you don't want bugs don't use software, the size of the compagny does not matter.

Re: Issue dialing 911 on Google Pixel 6 cell phones

#90

Post by semi-extrinsic »

mitchdoogle wrote: post #87
paganel wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I get this right, we have a $1+ trillion company not being able to build a basic functionality into their phones? (like "phone calls don't work" and the whole calling 911 issue). And, apparently, that was happening because of a shitty app built by another $1+ trillion company? In terms of innovation the US tech scene is toast with these dinosaurs.

Bugs happen everywhere, to everyone. The fact that it happened is not a surprise - the lack of an immediate fix is what is concerning

But you have to agree the state of MS Teams is an absolute shitshow. The quality is like it's put together by a bunch of guys coding on their spare time if they feel like it.
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