[HN Gopher] Google Pixel phones unusable after January 2024 syst...
___________________________________________________________________
Google Pixel phones unusable after January 2024 system update
Author : buildbot
Score : 147 points
Date : 2024-01-26 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.bleepingcomputer.com)
| blibble wrote:
| 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
| every 2nd or 3rd nexus/pixel phone
|
| now even I've switched to iOS
|
| (and in the process of switching my entire family too)
| refulgentis wrote:
| About 3/4 use Android, but very few have the courage to run
| recent builds.
|
| It's been a frustration point up the ladder, because they feel
| the ~same as you: why are they the only ones filing bugs?
|
| But it's not that. It's decayed internal culture. There's other
| stuff around the margins they could change*, but, the rot is
| deep and unlikely to be fixed.
|
| Too focused on...non-business objectives...to be effective. Too
| crucial to risk reforming. And it's very unlikely they hear
| about it up the ladder. And that's before the morale decline of
| "even when you smile and nod and sing along with the antics,
| you can be let go at any point by a 2 AM email"
|
| * tl;dr: make it dead simple to get a phone. Line managers were
| always a bit squirrely about expensing. It's a non-starter post
| late 2021, and there were never ever enough DVTs/EVTs for them
| to be meaningful. Establish "everyone is on Pixel next year's -
| 2", and have the VP send an org-wide email saying individuals
| can expense as needed.
| jeffbee wrote:
| They used to just give everyone a Nexus every year.
| InCityDreams wrote:
| No chance of letting them (your family) decide for themselves?
| saintfire wrote:
| They're not going to let they're family have green bubbles.
| If you cared about those around you then you would do the
| same.
| sz4kerto wrote:
| In Europe we just use multi platform messengers :) like
| Telegram or WhatsApp or something.
| Gabrys1 wrote:
| Don't run Google's Android. I've been on Lineage OS for years
| now and it's awesomely stable.
| orblivion wrote:
| Don't these alt Androids try to be up to date? Or are they
| purposely slow with merging upstream to avoid these problems,
| unless it's a security fix?
| fooblaster wrote:
| I have used a pixel 4a and pixel 6a for many years now and
| haven't had any of these issues. It sounds like potentially had
| defective hardware, and instead of getting it repaired you just
| lived with it.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| This can definitely be the case. I had a phone that for a
| year would drop out frequently doing cellular data. I assumed
| my provider was throttling me. Upgraded my phone and the
| problem went away; likeliest culprit was the cell circuit in
| the phone was slightly damaged and running full data comms
| was causing it to reboot.
| blibble wrote:
| apparently I can't edit my own comment now
|
| but for context the unreliability was always on the official
| Google flagship device using the update pushed to me OTA
|
| no betas, no rooting, nothing
|
| plain Google official Android on the official flagship device
|
| and it sucked, hard, for multiple different devices over years
|
| (and my family suffer the same pain on their devices too)
| jeffbee wrote:
| It seems to me that the flagship device _requires_ the beta.
| I had to enable beta QPRs to get features that are in the
| advertisements of the Pixel 8 Pro. Those features didn 't
| exist out of the box, which was confusing.
| SushiHippie wrote:
| GrapheneOS is literally the only thing that's keeping me on
| android. It has been really realiable for me, way more reliable
| than Samsungs or Google Pixels Android ROM.
|
| Though if GrapheneOS dies my next option will probably a linux
| phone, as I'll never get along with iOS.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| GrapheneOS is what specifically made me buy a Pixel (6 in my
| case). It's probably the sanest Android distribution
| available.
| sebastiennight wrote:
| Plus one to GrapheneOS.
|
| Switching from iOS to Graphene was a really smooth experience
| for me, I can install any app I've needed so far, and I don't
| have to deal with 200 tracking and buggy default apps.
|
| I wish they would keep security updates going longer than the
| current period though.
| kreddor wrote:
| I've been using Android since 2010 and don't remember having
| any stability issues for the last 6-8 years at least. Maybe
| it's a Pixel-thing? I've mostly owned Sony and Moto devices.
| They're often 1-2 versions behind on Android which could
| explain why they're more stable maybe.
|
| (I like to customize my phones a lot (minimalist launcher,
| Termux software, Firefox with extensions) which I would hate to
| give up for iOS).
| sz4kerto wrote:
| It's always a compromise. With Android you can get actually
| good typing experience in non-English languages, voice typing
| in non-English, proper desktop view in browsers and really good
| call quality or better PWM in some cases.
|
| It depends on what is important for you. iOS is not a panacea
| either.
|
| By they way, with Android, just use Samsung. Despite the
| duplicated apps it's just a better experience.
| flerchin wrote:
| Your symptoms are all plausibly explained by a bad battery.
| sam2426679 wrote:
| 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.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| I'm always baffled when I hear someone having an experience
| like this.
|
| I've been using Androids since 2010. Motorola Droid, Motorola
| Droid 4, Motorola Droid Turbo, Pixel 3, and now Pixel 6 Pro.
| I've never had anything like what you describe.
|
| If you're having that many problems on multiple devices, it
| makes me question what the hell you do to your phones to make
| them do that.
| jacek wrote:
| 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?
| malfist wrote:
| Even an unlimited QA budget won't catch everything. Though it
| is unflattering to have two major issues like this occur so
| close together.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| While true, why would it miss something so glaring?
|
| Minor rant but if trillion dollar companies can't get it
| right then what hope does anybody else have?
| charcircuit wrote:
| Because most test devices are likely constantly factory
| reset and aren't given the chance to live with multiple
| user profiles on them for a long period of time where cruft
| can build up and people can notice that using using
| external storage is broken.
| saghm wrote:
| Sure, but this is the past half dozen models of the phone
| made by the same company who makes the OS. You'd think these
| would be the easiest possible test cases for them to do up
| front.
| TillE wrote:
| I'm sure they test those to some extent.
|
| I assume it's just a fraction of users affected, so it
| could be something like a service reading third-party app
| data and crashing due to a bug. The kind of thing that
| should be caught in code review, because comprehensive
| testing is next to impossible.
| jeffbee wrote:
| The fact that they have the ability to roll this out to a
| handful of users, all of whose devices stopped working, and to
| detect that and not proceed with the rollout is considered
| success, by them.
| shadowgovt wrote:
| And, indeed, this rollout generally _is_ done after in-house
| testing.
|
| So something's likely up where folks in the wild have their
| phones configured in a way Googlers don't.
| cantours wrote:
| You can only acquire billions of dollars if you cut corners and
| cheat as much as possible.
| iopq wrote:
| 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.
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| > This isn't true
|
| Are you misinterpreting the previous comment?
|
| They didn't say you HAVE to cut corners to make billions,
| only that you CAN.
|
| EDIT: Oops, I missed the "only" in the other comment"
| wizzwizz4 wrote:
| "You can only X if Y" means "In order to X, Y" also "You
| have to Y in order to X".
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| Shit, I missed the "only" in the comment.
| bradleyishungry wrote:
| amd also was sued and settled for price fixing with nvidia
| in 2008
| jacquesm wrote:
| I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up making them money: people
| will replace their devices with newer ones. Once the device is
| sold it no longer has a function for the manufacturer until the
| next sale happens to the same user. So any update that bricks a
| percentage of the devices (or makes them effectively unusable)
| may well extract some more $ from the users.
| jstarfish wrote:
| I make it a point never to buy replacement devices from the
| same vendor if the product fails in such fashion.
|
| Never reward incompetence with additional revenue.
| jacquesm wrote:
| With only two major vendors of phone software that gets
| problematic pretty quickly.
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Staffing proper QA teams went out of vogue a couple of years
| ago.
|
| Turns out that the way incentives are set up at most tech
| companies today, nobody gets dinged for shipping major software
| regressions/bugs while everyone is patted on the back for
| shipping even completely broken features on time.
| 1905 wrote:
| Imagine when this starts happening to cars
| lgleason wrote:
| Tesla owner here. Many stories of that with them, and the
| latest autosteer update was a major downgrade.
| rconti wrote:
| Thankfully they mostly break the UI. Though my auto wipers
| got really bad recently. The body control electronics are
| pretty solid. I mean, you could lock/unlock, drive the car
| without the tablet. Not that regulators would approve of it.
| ashleyn wrote:
| You don't need to imagine:
| https://www.reddit.com/r/MachE/comments/18m3ne2
| radicaldreamer wrote:
| Rivian, Tesla, Ford (Mustang EVs) all have had bad OTA software
| shipped to them. The problem will continue to get worse as cars
| become mostly software defined.
| viscountchocula wrote:
| If you're not yet updated to the January Google Play system, can
| you keep the phone from auto-updating? I know how to do this for
| a full Android system update, but not for Google Play Services.
| newprint wrote:
| 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 updates.
| dannyfritz07 wrote:
| FYI, my pixel 5a phone has also been really slow and acting out
| in the last month. Crashes and extreme sluggishness in apps.
| Sometimes when I pull up the app-switcher, I can't get out of
| it without rebooting the phone.
|
| I however am not on the Jan 2024 Google Play update detailed by
| this article. I am still on the recommended Nov 2023 one.
| twisteriffic wrote:
| If you're low on storage space, try freeing up a few gigs. My
| pixel 5 was impossibly slow when I let it get under 5 gigs
| free.
| 7thaccount wrote:
| I've often had like 20 Mb free lately....it REALLY doesn't
| like that. I'm also on a Pixel3. About time to upgrade lol.
| rconti wrote:
| 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.
| judge2020 wrote:
| 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
| alemanek wrote:
| Not IOS but MacOS Sonoma made my 2019 Intel MacBook Pro close
| to unusable. Constant kernel panics, usb ports not
| consistently recognizing devices, charging not working when
| powered on, wouldn't recognize displays over HDMI.
|
| I had to roll back to Ventura and everything is fixed now. I
| am hoping to get another year or so before my next upgrade.
| windowsrookie wrote:
| My 2018 15" MacBook Pro runs Sonoma without any issues.
| Only thing I notice is wake from sleep on battery seems to
| be a little slow. But maybe it just feels that way because
| of my M1 air.
| alemanek wrote:
| Weird, yeah not sure why I had so many issues but it was
| an adventure to get all rolled back. Booting into
| recovery mode it had no issues charging or recognizing
| usb devices. So guessing something borked at the OS
| level.
|
| Just a guess though. If I had a backup computer I would
| have tried to dig deeper. But atm just need a working
| machine.
| lolinder wrote:
| Extreme slowness and bugginess are a pain, but what you're
| describing doesn't sound like the boot loops and inability to
| read from internal storage that people are describing from this
| update. I'd hazard a guess that you're suffering from something
| different.
| dvnguyen wrote:
| I don't see myself switching to an Android phone but iPhone
| updates do break things. Since upgrading to latest iOS, both my
| phone (personal and work) keyboards are unusable if I enable
| both English and Vietnamese keyboards. Looks like there's a bug
| in their keyboard prediction engine. It's been 4 months and I
| don't see they fix it yet.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| Nobody's perfect, but I can't remember Apple ever shipping
| updates that brick their phones in two consecutive quarters.
|
| At least Apple releases the images you need to restore your
| phone to a bootable state if something goes wrong during an
| update.
|
| See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145490
| channel_t wrote:
| While I can't say that I have noticed anything out of the
| ordinary yet on my Pixel 7, I will say that I have been a
| diehard Google phone user since the Nexus 4 days and have been
| really disappointed with how things have turned out with the
| more recent iterations of Google phones. Terrible battery life,
| bugs, poor quality fingerprint readers, questionable design
| decisions in general. The phones used to be a fairly reasonable
| alternative to the Apple offerings, but these days I feel like
| there is really no competition and am very close to switching
| to the other side. I really want to stick with what had
| traditionally worked for me, but I keep getting burned year
| after year now.
| pipes wrote:
| Glad it's not justenon the finger print thing. I had to turn
| it off on my 6a. Utterly infuriating trying to open phone
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| Not really a Google fan, but the fingerprint reader on my
| Pixel 7a is much better then it was on my Pixel 5, when it
| works.
| trog wrote:
| My 7a is better than my 6a, but they're both very poor
| compared to the dedicated scanner on my Pixel 3 (which was
| also able to be used for actions, like pulling down
| notification bar). I miss it a lot.
| hbn wrote:
| I was also big into Android and the Google system starting in
| the same era, when the Nexus 4 was taking the nerd world by
| storm with its crazy value. And stuck with Google devices
| from it, to the Nexus 5, the Nexus 6P, the first Pixel, and
| the Pixel 3. But the constant cancelling of service,
| rebranding, overhauling, and feeling like I'm paying to be a
| perpetual beta tester I finally bought my first iPhone in
| 2020 when the 12 line came out (the 12 mini was incredibly
| enticing)
|
| The one thing I thought I'd regret with switching from
| Android was the unlimited photo backups with Google Photos,
| and within a few months of my switch Google announced they
| were axing unlimited photo backups, even when you bought a
| Pixel. So they don't even have that to lure me back any more.
|
| I still keep up with what's going on in the world of Android
| and it seems to only be news that gives me even less reason
| to switch back. They're trying to turn it more into iOS but
| with zero of the grace of Apple, and continue to have the
| corporate equivalent of ADHD with their lack of being able to
| focus and commit to a plan.
|
| It's no surprise more and more people -- especially young
| people -- are switching to an iPhone. The iPhone keeps
| getting better and Android keeps getting worse. For the sake
| of all consumers, I hope they can continue to compete in the
| future, but as it is, I don't know who Android is for other
| than people who staunchly don't want to use an Apple product.
| philistine wrote:
| I think you're experiencing the fickleness of Google through
| their hardware.
|
| Google is famous for killing products and constantly
| reinventing the wheel instead of committing to a solution.
|
| Those software issues are seeping down to their hardware
| products. Of all the ginormous monopolists, it's the most
| likely to disappear.
| graybeardhacker wrote:
| Apple literally just settled a lawsuit brought against them for
| intentionally slowing down phones to force users to upgrade.
| meloddo wrote:
| Once my girlfriend's apple watch became a $300 bracelet after
| an iOS update broke the watch app on her Iphone (wouldn't
| open). Without the app, the watch was completely unusable. And,
| after looking into it, this issue had been reported to Apple
| 4-5 months prior where Apple supposedly immediately fixed it
| with another update. However, my gf and multiple forums online
| still had the issue and Apple refused to address it (I assume
| they quietly fixed it in a later update).
|
| The only way to fix it was to back up her phone and factory
| reset, and if we hadn't done that who knows how long it would
| have been before she could use the watch.
| curt15 wrote:
| Doesn't Android use A/B updates these days? How hard would it be
| to revert to the previous working version?
|
| https://source.android.com/docs/core/ota/ab
| csdvrx wrote:
| > How hard would it be to revert to the previous working
| version?
|
| In Qualcomm EDL firehose mode? Super simple if you have the
| QPST: the phone is waiting for an image to write to the flash.
| It's actually waiting for the image to immediately reboot once
| it's written.
|
| But google doesn't release these images, so it's like having
| computer permanently bricked after the hard drive was corrupted
| because there's no install media available.
|
| I think we (as people who are on HN and can understand the
| problem) have a responsibility in not letting such things
| happen, if only because they hurt the people who don't
| understand the problem, the simplicity of the solution, and may
| just have a phone as their only computing device.
| summm wrote:
| Since Pixel 6 Qualcomm is no longer used...
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| I was unable to register new fingerprints or use existing
| registered fingerprints and my screen would randomly become
| unresponsive... I think it was software related because it appear
| to be working as expected now. (Pixel 7a)
|
| I don't auto-update apps though, just manually update the OS.
|
| I think it was the last time I bought a Pixel... but I am not
| sure because I don't know what else to buy.
| bloopernova wrote:
| Mine is running hot and draining its battery fast. They sure
| messed up this patch.
| therealfiona wrote:
| Loved my Nexus 5x until the high power CPU cores started failing
| causing instabilities. Loved my pixel 2 until the battery stopped
| holding a charge. Liked my 4a (it is literally a faster 2 that
| you can't squeeze to bring up google assistant (the squeeze was
| my fave feature)) until the April 2023 update that ruined the
| battery life. They never fixed it. Pixel 7 was suffering the same
| issues at the time. I made the decision to switch to a Samsung
| S23+ and not looking back.
|
| Build quality of the Google flagships never have been the best,
| but they always have issues. I am getting too old to have time to
| fiddle with this stuff and just want something that works.
| bitwize wrote:
| I hear a small company called Apple is making a viable
| alternative.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Apple is by no means perfect when it comes to updating
| devices.
|
| https://www.google.com/search?q=apple+ota+update+breaks+phon.
| ..
|
| There isn't a single manufacturer that consistently gets this
| right, only different shades of gray.
| bdcravens wrote:
| This is very true. Maybe it's just perception, but from the
| outside, it feels like Google plays the most fast and loose
| of the mainstream options. Samsung and Apple seem more
| trustworthy.
| nucleardog wrote:
| Yes, but in terms of:
|
| > I am getting too old to have time to fiddle with this
| stuff and just want something that works.
|
| I definitely find the iPhone great.
|
| It _generally_ just works. If shit does break there's no
| fiddling... it's just broken. If it doesn't work the way
| you want there's no fiddling... suck it up or get a new
| phone.
|
| I was going to say it's like an appliance and compare it to
| my toaster, but I would 100% end up at my kitchen table
| angrily disassembling my toaster if it failed to make me
| breakfast one morning.
| jacquesm wrote:
| I'm still on an older Nokia, it is 'just something that
| works'. It's limited enough that it isn't an distraction
| and it works very well as a phone.
| hbn wrote:
| At the scale Apple operates at, if there's a widespread
| issue with the iPhone, it will be known. And not just
| reported about on tech nerd sites, it'll be on major news
| stations because it's potentially affecting your dad and
| many people you know. That's why bendgate and antennagate
| were such famous incidents.
|
| If Apple was having hardware and software defects at the
| rate of recent Pixel phones scaled to the iPhone's
| marketshare, it would be massive news.
| ravetcofx wrote:
| Samsung is quite reliable. I really like Dex and their
| overall multi-tasking capabilities
| seatac76 wrote:
| 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.
| seper8 wrote:
| Apple did the same in the past...
| HackerThemAll wrote:
| The funny part is that internally they get the update way
| earlier than anyone outside, so it should already be spotted.
|
| https://9to5google.com/2017/04/18/google-pixel-xl-ota-dogfoo...
| kevingadd wrote:
| Dogfooding there was historically kind of a joke. I had
| severe issues with my Nexus hardware as a Googler and none of
| them ever got fixed. When they offered to give us all free
| Nexus phones as a Christmas gift one year I refused because I
| wasn't about to subject myself to another one. I'd wager
| money that dogfooders caught this issue and reported it, and
| nothing was done because it either fell through the cracks or
| wasn't reported enough to pass the "care about it" bar.
|
| Don't interpret this as a slam on the individual developers
| from the Android team, though. They're determined to fix
| stuff and some of them worked with me to troubleshoot issues.
| At the end of the day though it was organizational priorities
| preventing fixes, or high level decisions resulting in
| trainwrecks down the road.
|
| My favorite example is that the Nexus 5x phone I owned
| (bought out-of-pocket) had horrible thermal characteristics.
| The second-hand explanation I got was that late in the design
| process, they decided to put a fingerprint reader on the
| housing such that it sat _directly_ on top of the main CPU
| package, and it turns out fingerprint readers don 't work
| terribly well as heat sinks. The people who knew enough to
| protest about this decision were, it seems, overruled.
|
| I can attest that the stupid thing overheated constantly,
| causing the CPUs to throttle. I had to stop using the
| official (also purchased from Google) case because the case
| further impaired heat dissipation. That was my second Google
| handset and the last time I will ever personally buy one.
|
| My current employer did buy me a Pixel 4a for work use but I
| don't have anything positive to say about it other than "it
| only makes me angry some of the time".
| HackerThemAll wrote:
| Thanks for this perspective. It's mind-boggling that a
| company with such resources, talent and presence in the
| whole world is unable to innovate in such a simple thing
| and it seems they're going similar route Microsoft did with
| its smartphone, which they eventually killed.
|
| Let's look at it from a different perspective. Google is
| unable to properly launch a phone worldwide and the
| decisions are incomprehensible to a thinking human. They
| support Pixel 8 in Ireland (5 million population), Norway
| (5.4 million), Denmark (5.9) but they don't in Poland (38
| million, part of European Union for 20 years) where they
| bought one of the largest offices for over $600 million USD
| to support 2,500 employees. Poles consider Pixel's price a
| fair price, not an expensive one. Not to mention lack of
| Pixel presence in at least some Asian countries with at
| least several hundred millions of potential customers.
|
| As for the technicalities, they even did not enter all
| radio frequencies and countries in their version of
| Android, so that 5G or some Wi-Fi bands don't work in some
| countries. When you roam from supported country to an
| unsupported one, you may loose part or all connectivity.
| They did the same in Chromecast. Multiple layoffs confirm
| it's all about money at Google, so why they don't reach for
| an easy money from smartphone market? Lack of vision, lack
| of knowledge, name it however you want.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| If Apple were to tone down their anticompetitive monopolistic
| bullshit by like, one notch, I would have bought an iPhone 15
| Pro Max instead of the Pixel 8 Pro I would up buying.
|
| Maybe in a few years when the EU has managed to force universal
| compliance for the DMA...
| green-eclipse wrote:
| 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
| timothyduong wrote:
| I did a little anecdotal Search using reddit, added "bricked"
| to iosBetas and Android and found android had more recent
| results.
|
| There's issues with software which affect a function then
| there's issues that ruin the whole phone...
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| E_WONTFIX
|
| How many tons of ewaste was just created? Even the core products
| are hurting. The Boeingification of everything is serious risk
| for all the civilization.
| Volundr wrote:
| > E_WONTFIX
|
| Where are you getting this? The article says they are looking
| into it.
| nerpderp82 wrote:
| WONTFIX is the most popular bug resolution status at Google.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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 regretting it. So now
| I'm facing a tough choice: potentially run a device with a
| security issue on the network here _or_ play the update game of
| Russian Roulette (with 5 bullets instead of the normal single
| one) and hope that I still have a functional device afterwards.
| NoZebra120vClip wrote:
| Look at the bright side: a bricked phone won't collect your
| personal data, you won't be able to fall for phishing scams on
| it, and its battery should last a really long time!
|
| Hyperbole aside, let's remember that "better" and "safer" exist
| in dialectic tension. Or, "convenience" vs. "security". Often,
| functionality or features are removed because they were
| insecure, so now your device is "safer". If you've got a big
| feature update pending, consider how many bugs/flaws it may
| introduce as the software gets "better".
| jacquesm wrote:
| Slim pickings...
| csdvrx wrote:
| 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.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > 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.
|
| There's a bullet proof recovery mode, check my comment
| below ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39145490 )
| where I detail the steps and provide links.
|
| The EDL firehose mode is just the phone showing up on a
| very unique USB-ID and waiting to be spoon fed the data to
| be rewritten to its flash. It needs partition
| specifications (think like a GPT partition table) + the
| binary data for each partition (think like the EFI
| partition for the bootloader, the Windows partition for the
| actual operating system etc)
|
| It would take litteraly 1 minute for someone with access to
| the QPST to post it to archive.org and help all the people
| who've been affected by the bug.
|
| It would take each of them about 5 minutes to restore their
| phone to a working state. You may object that not everyone
| may have the technical ability to do that, but I'm sure the
| small businesses fixing phones in the malls would be happy
| to charge for the "service" of plugging the phone on a
| Windows computer, double-clicking on an icon, drag and
| dropping the right files and clicking on another button.
|
| IMHO, the fact this situation is allowed to persist, even
| after multiple reports of similar pixel phone problems in
| the past, can only have 2 explanation: 1) the good people
| at google writing this software have less understanding
| that you and I, 2 random HN users or 2) there's money to be
| made in not fixing the problem, as it will increase the
| update cycle (people with a dead phone will buy another
| phone)
|
| I'm all for making money, but not if the consequence is
| creating ewaste, and forcing people who may not have deep
| pockets to spend more money on yet another broken-by-design
| phone.
| jacquesm wrote:
| That's way beyond most ordinary users though.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > That's way beyond most ordinary users though.
|
| To take a broken phone to the mall where there're a small
| store that's known to fix phones?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, precisely. That puts the onus for the fix squarely
| on the users, who have not created the problem and who
| likely will mis-identify it. If it were to happen to me -
| it won't - it would cost me half a day and that's
| assuming the 'small store in the mall' will be able to do
| the repair on the spot, which if there is a glut of
| customers due to this issue may well not be the case.
| MyNameIs_Hacker wrote:
| You forgot 3) It requires money to fix the problem, and
| Google has become such a bureaucratic mess, that it can't
| get out its own way to do it.
|
| Those of us in large corporations see that pattern quite
| often.
| csdvrx wrote:
| > Those of us in large corporations see that pattern
| quite often.
|
| It's sad there's such a dilution of responsibility such
| problems are allowed to persist, and that nobody cares
| they are killing random people phones.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| 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
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| sideshowb wrote:
| So obviously open source software for proprietary hardware
| is treated as, er, ..?
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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.
| tmsbrg wrote:
| Have you heard about Android?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, if you have a point to make you should spell it out.
| Google manufactures phones, has an open source OS and has
| a bunch of proprietary stuff that they do not release,
| see:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Android_(operating_system)
|
| "However, most devices run on the proprietary Android
| version developed by Google, which ships with additional
| proprietary closed-source software pre-installed, most
| notably Google Mobile Services (GMS) which includes core
| apps such as Google Chrome, the digital distribution
| platform Google Play, and the associated Google Play
| Services development platform. Firebase Cloud Messaging
| is used for push notifications. "
| grotorea wrote:
| At least they're doing updates.
| lacoolj wrote:
| 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.
| jassyr wrote:
| 6a user here. No issues.
| jjulius wrote:
| FWIW, I'm a Pixel user (who drags his ass installing these
| updates, so I haven't updated yet) and I naturally assumed
| reading the headline that this didn't actually impact all Pixel
| phones. Reason being that we would've obviously heard a loud
| uproar if _every_ Pixel phone was suddenly bricked.
| ffsm8 wrote:
| Pixel 8 pro and pixel 6 owner here. no issues so far, both
| devices are up-to-date
| ijhuygft776 wrote:
| > Reason being that we would've obviously heard a loud uproar
| if every Pixel phone was suddenly bricked.
|
| Many people (most?) have more than one device... computer...
| etc.. either way, there are many other ways to contact
| someone.
| jacquesm wrote:
| 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'.
| leto_ii wrote:
| > With three phones and a one-in-eight chance of being
| affected (assuming 50% for each phone)
|
| 1/8 would be the chance to have all 3 affected. The chance of
| having at least one affected would be 1-1/8.
| jacquesm wrote:
| Correct, I meant to write 'unaffected'. I'll fix it, thank
| you.
| bwanab wrote:
| That's probably a good policy, but it isn't good English. Any
| formulation of X has Y characteristic where X is a group
| implies all members of the group unless the "some" is
| explicit.
|
| It's a total clickbait headline, but you already knew that
| hence your policy.
| ajross wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Sure, but isn't it the _primary job_ of journalists writing
| about subjects like this to figure that stuff out before
| publishing? This is a headline that clearly implies "all"
| phones. Now we're in a subthread where it seems like the
| fraction is "<12.5%" (actually we have four in my household,
| so that gets us to "less than one in 12" I guess).
|
| Do you genuinely believe that "Pixel phones unusable" is a
| correct characterization of the situation given the data at
| hand? If you were an editor, would you have published that
| headline?
| jacquesm wrote:
| No, I wouldn't have published that headline, I would have
| put 'Some' in front of it, because that's the part that I
| could be reasonably sure of.
| lolinder wrote:
| > a one-in-eight chance of being unaffected (assuming 50% for
| each phone)
|
| Where are you getting 50/50 odds of being affected? Is that
| cited somewhere, or just a random possible percentage?
|
| (I own one unaffected Pixel.)
| jacquesm wrote:
| Out of thin air...
| slenk wrote:
| Same. 8p, 6a and 6p all working fine
| josephcsible wrote:
| Are you sure they all got the Google Play system update, and
| that you're not confusing it with the Android security update?
| JAM1971 wrote:
| I'm sure. I have two in my house and they're purring right
| along.
| JeremyNT wrote:
| Totally agree, this headline is misleading and the article
| isn't useful. It's just blogspam for a reddit thread where some
| users report issues that coincide with receiving this update.
|
| When you have an installed base as large as Google, some users
| are going to report problems after _every_ update. These
| problems may not even have anything to do with the update
| contents, perhaps the update is what the user associates with
| the onset of their issues. It 's entirely possible these
| "storage issues" are hardware and the i/o and reboot cycle of
| the update just caused it to manifest in a user visible way.
|
| By all means I want users to hold Google accountable for
| mistakes but I feel like there's basically no information in
| this article beyond the speculation on reddit. The standard for
| HN should be higher than this IMO.
| csdvrx wrote:
| I don't use smartphones but I find their software stack very
| interesting. I just investigated a Pixel 5a phone that was
| brought to me for "sudden death". The owner reported the screen
| showed an update attempt, then ended up bricked.
|
| It's allegedly impossible, due to the A/B update mode. Yet it
| managed to end up bricked, so the question is how, and what can
| be done.
|
| After investigation (you can do it very simply by looking at the
| USB ids), it's currently in Qualcomm EDL firehose mode: this is
| likely due to a failed attempted update
| https://xdaforums.com/t/fix-pixel-3-qusb_bulk_cid-xxxx_sn-xx...:
| "because the bootloader has been corrupted during an attempted
| update - it's in EDL mode because there's nothing else it can
| boot into. I'd speculate it has some link with that "clever" new
| approach of being able to update the OS in the background and
| switch to it on the next boot"
|
| The "clever approach" that causes the problem is called the FOTA
| (or OTA, for "Over The Air") update, done by the carrier. This is
| known and documented on
| https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/248340373
|
| To leave EDL mode, it needs to be fed a bootloader + an image
| matching its model, to flash the eMMC memory inside.
|
| On Windows, it's easy to do Qualcomm Flash tool (GPST/QFIL) ,
| which is easily available from many places like
| https://github.com/stanislawrogasik/Pixel5-VoLTE-VoWiFi/tree...,
| and the process is documented on sites like
| https://imobiefix.com/qualcomm-prog-emmc-firehose/
|
| Ideally, the MBN file has to exactly match the model, brand (etc)
| so if you have a 5a, you need a 5a MBN (and maybe a XML file,
| still reading)
|
| According to
| https://support.google.com/fi/thread/227549262/sm7520-or-sdm...
| the model SM7520 or SDM765 ; this is confirmed by
| https://github.com/hoplik/Firehose-Finder/blob/master/ForFil...
| because it's listed as a "Snapdragon 765G" / 0011E0E1
|
| According to https://xdaforums.com/t/bricked-google-
| pixel-4a-5g-mbn-file-... "Google does not make QPST files
| available for the Pixel series" but someone else might have
| uploaded that somewhere
|
| Based on https://discuss.grapheneos.org/d/9656-brick-5a-help it's
| a well known problem: "The Pixel 5A has some hardware issues. I
| had mine poop out on me recently. Contact Googles repair team. If
| you have warranty they will replace it" : It's described
| extensively on https://suspiciouslygeneric.com/2022/11/11/the-
| hidden-flaw-k...
|
| According to https://xdaforums.com/t/ipsa-pixel-5a-extended-
| warranty-i.46... "Due to the Pixel 5a Black Screen of Death
| issue, Google has extended the warranty on 5a devices for one
| year beyond the original device warranty"
|
| However, google has denied the extended warranty, even while
| clearly being the cause of death of the phone.
|
| Shame on you google, for creating more e-waste by refusing to
| release the QPST. If anyone reading this works at google, try to
| do something. It's not nice to put perfectly usable phones in a
| landfill just because a QPST is not released.
|
| I hope someone will leak the QPST, because for people who don't
| have the money, it's also serious expense.
| green-eclipse wrote:
| Mine is working fine.
| e12e wrote:
| > 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.
| 3np wrote:
| So degoogled GrapheneOS not affected.
| microflash wrote:
| You can turn off Automatic system updates with "Settings > System
| > Developer options > Automatic system updates > toggle it off".
|
| Also, note that this is not OS update which is causing havoc (as
| per the article). Google Play system updates are different[1].
|
| [1]: https://support.google.com/product-
| documentation/answer/1146...
| neotoy wrote:
| Still using my Pixel 3 and running the latest update, no issues.
| Hopefully my phone is just too old to be effected.
| fletchowns wrote:
| I installed the update on my Pixel 7 but I haven't experienced
| the issues described in the article.
|
| However, I am back to having to re-pair my Garmin Venu 2 Plus
| watch every day after some Pixel update a few months ago.
|
| It was broken in early 2023, then they fixed it, then broke it
| again :(
| https://www.reddit.com/r/GarminWatches/comments/12hpk0c/venu...
|
| I can't help but think they do it deliberately, in order to drive
| folks to the Pixel watch.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Ah, so. I'm not the only one.
|
| In my case I actually can't properly pair the device at all. I
| hadn't used my watch (Fenix 6 X) in many months, and last time
| I used it was with another phone.
|
| I went to pair with my Pixel on Android 14 and the actual
| _bluetooth_ pairing works fine -- shows up in the list of
| Bluetooth devices -- but the Garmin app refuses to add it,
| thinks it can 't talk to it.
|
| So the phone / watch connection can never happen.
|
| I suspect Google has made changes to bluetooth stack _yet
| again_ and the Garmin stuff simply isn 't working with it. (TBH
| their apps seem pretty janky)
|
| After this I might just go back to an iPhone.
| mihaic wrote:
| My Pixel 5's camera has not been working since October 2023 (app
| crashed on start), and I don't seem to be the only one. No update
| to fix this seems in sight. Google seems to really have dropped
| the ball on Pixel QA.
|
| It's a damn shame, since the Pixel was really the only good phone
| that wasn't huge or with an awful glass back.
| 0xblinq wrote:
| iPhones are expensive for a reason.
|
| Moving from android was the best decision I've made tech-wise.
|
| If you can afford it, it's totally worth its value.
| dralley wrote:
| I've lost so much respect for Google over the past few years. I
| keep having problems with the Youtube app locking up on my Pixel
| 4a, requiring me to force-stop the app via applications settings
| before it will work again. And after doing some travel with my
| phone, I have a difficult time believing that the Android PMs do
| much traveling with theirs. So many little issues that my wife
| didn't have with her iPhone.
| tadeegan wrote:
| The android pm probably wear Patagonia and use iPhones.
| Honestly
| blackbear_ wrote:
| No problem whatsoever on my side. GrapheneOS btw
| anderfernandes1 wrote:
| I have a Pixel 7 with the January update and everything is fine.
| mataug wrote:
| As much as I don't like apple's walled garden, reliability and
| consistency are exteremly valuable for users like my mom who's
| currently a pixel user.
|
| I hate being worried about her calling from a neighbor's phone
| one day because her phone is unusable. I'm aware that this issue
| doesn't affect all pixels, but an issue like this affecting even
| 1% of devices is not okay.
|
| I'm holding on to hope that google hasn't agressively pushed out
| this update, and my mom's phone won't auto update until this is
| resolved.
| rurp wrote:
| It's not just breaking changes that are a problem, UX changes
| just for the heck of it can cause people a lot of frustration.
| Pretty much every major Android version moves or changes core
| functionality. Changing the UI without a functional reason is
| the sort of thing a lot of people in tech get excited about but
| most people outside of the industry loathe.
| lancesells wrote:
| I feel Apple does this too. The main app I use is Music and
| it sure feels like the UI is worse and overly complicated
| these days. Not to mention uglier.
| solarhess wrote:
| This happened to my Samsung S23 after the update too. The thing
| would black screen spontaneously following the update. At first
| it would respond to an hard-reboot, then repeatedly complain
| about Google Play Services crashing, and eventually black-screen
| again. After hard-rebooting it a few times it no longer even
| responds to the hard-reset key combo.
| devaiops9001 wrote:
| GrapheneOS users remain unaffected.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2024-01-26 23:02 UTC)