Google Pixel's most dangerous bug: failing to call 911
androidpolice.com
androidpolice.com
I kept pressing 911 and rapidly pressing where the send key was and moving the phone to my ear to hear silence. Dial 911, press what I thought was send, put it to my ear, silence. The worst sound you want to hear when you're alone and need 911 immediately. Eventually I took a breath and went slow to see what was happening and finally noticed it was automatically sending the call.
When the alarm goes off in the morning, I'm half asleep still, my eyes are blurry, and when I look at the phone to snooze the alarm, it has two tiny, tiny, like 15x15 pixel buttons with random icons, no text, on both sides of the screen - one button disables the alarm and the other snoozes.
There's no way in that tired, near blind, state that I could tell or process what I was looking at and would effectively end up just pressing a random button and hoping I remembered by instinct which one was snooze. It really felt like no one had ever actually used/tested the alarm.
In a recent OS update they changed it so that now it has two, much bigger buttons, which clearly state "SNOOZE" and "STOP", they finally changed it, but for all those years it was just atrocious.
I just want to turn my alarm off for a lie-in and I have to play button-sniper.
I find this kind of crap all over the place in Android - buttons dancing around or changing function so idiotically that it almost feels like my phone is intentionally trying to trip me up.
The designers also seem stuck under an assumption the user is operating in an act-look feedback loop. In reality, good tools let you shift your focus away from them once you become proficient - the mechanics of their use becomes second nature and fades into the background allowing you to focus on your task - exactly the way you found yourself relying on muscle memory in that razor-focused, high stakes situation.
I'm saying this not only as a lifelong tech nerd, but from lived experience as a First Responder (where we routinely deal with high-stress situations, and aim to train with our equipment until it's too familiar to get wrong). It's unconscionable they'd ship such an inconsistent behavior in a function that is at once critical and rarely-exercised.
The problem wasn't you, it was your shoddily designed tool.
It's not the only culprit, of course. There's still room to at least design a layout that is predictable, and with buttons that are easily reachable.
Some UIs make me think the designer was an alien invader in a human body. It thinks nobody can tell, but when it designs a UI that can only be called "intuitive" if you have 7 fingers, the 2-nd and 5-th longer than the others, and the 3-rd one a tentacle... I got you, motherfucker!
It has nothing to do with touchscreens. Windows 3.1 UI is thousand times more usable than the crap that is Android and iOS. The UI "designers" decided that everything must be a label and the only menus allowed are the hamburger ones.
Remember that most of the technology industry today is primarily an ad delivery platform - either current one (aka there are ads there already), or a future one (so even areas where there aren’t ads yet aren’t safe).
Designers want you to always be in an act-look loop, because then you’ll either look at the ad which is already there, or at the very least generate more “engagement” which pumps up their analytics numbers (translates to promotions/salary) and ultimately translates to more ads (the company can now pitch this high-engagement screen real estate to the highest bidder).
The era where computers/technology did things as their primary function appears to be just a happy accident. It’s only a matter of time before you get ads for health insurance while you dial 911.
But yes, now I disable this "feature" on my phones.
2022: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-pixel-3-update-emergen...
Emergency calls being their own system which rarely gets tested by users is becoming a real issue.
In the UK if you ring 999, you get put through to a 999 call handling centre that'll forward your call onto the police, fire and rescue, or ambulance service.
As part of 999 handling, emergency control rooms can subscribe to a service called EISEC, which will provide details of the 999 centre that forwarded the call and an approximate location of the caller. This is determined from network provider records for fixed-line phones, or from your phone's GPS if you ring from a mobile, or as an absolute last resort the GPS location of the nearest mobile serving site. The protocol is actually published and available to the public as SIN278 (Supplier Information Notice), but you will absolutely not be able to roll your own and expect to connect it to BT's network just for funsies. I know, I asked.
Anyway, to do a full end-to-end test you really need to ring 999, ask to be put through to the service you're testing, and check that your location pops up on their dispatch system. The 999 operators are always happy to help verify lines and so on, as long as you're not excessive.
The one thing you must never do if you accidentally call 999/112/911 is just hang up. DO NOT DO THIS. They WILL send the cops to check out what's going on, and they will send them quickly. If you (or your small child) calls 999, take the phone, explain it was an accidental call and you don't need assistance, and they'll close it off.
Is there a "no" missing?
The only updates for Windows are oriented around extracting more data or as revenue or integrated Microsoft product annoyances. Bugs are ignored for YEARS sometimes, major updates with huge issues get fired off with casual abandon.
Google is less openly hostile, but I get the very strong feeling that the android and pixel teams are about 6 people a piece. Like software in very deep maintenance mode. What bothers me most about this is less "android never receives big changes or major features" but instead "android/pixel has a big list of obvious bugs and has for a VERY long time, and they never get acknowledged ,much less fixed."
The camera app video judder saga is a prime example. (https://reddit.com/comments/1o1i5hi) How the HELL has nobody noticed and fixed this over there? Why is a random community member being forced to deal with this? Honestly pathetic work from Alphabet.
and they all use iphones
Between Pixel 2/4/8 (yeah yeah what can I say I'm a masochist), I had problems with out-of-focus pictures, widely inaccurate GPS, and my absolute favorite making a call which would dial the number and then about a second later immediately hang up.
I had a brief fling with using an iPhone but the speech-to-text dictation was absolute GARBAGE DAY and I make pretty heavy use of that feature while walking my dog.
Is it your phone hanging up or are you calling an iPhone in do not disturb mode, in which case you have to call twice for it to go through (because their phone is automatically hanging up on you)
It happened pretty inconsistently, but I managed to make it happen against another person - who also had a Pixel phone so I don't think it was related to the "Do Not Disturb" mode. I'd assume DND would at least put you through to voicemail though.
Also, in the Google Message app used for sending text messages, when you have 2 SIMs from the same carrier in your phone, you can't tell through which one you got the SMS (if this is a message to which you can't reply, e.g., an advertisement). You get the carrier name instead of the SIM card name which you set up in the settings. This is not specific to Pixels.
RCS is a joke. Either "your device doesn't support" it, or "your carrier doesn't support" it, or there are other issues. Nobody cares about their RCS, the entire planet uses WhatsApp, or iMessage, because they just work, unlike RCS.
Silly issues. That's Google in all their glory. They can do magic that serves billions of people, but they are unable to polish the edges.
Those silly humans really should separate the police from their emergency services