While people use their mobile phones for all sorts of things nowadays, making and receiving calls are two basic functions that one would expect to work all the time, even when things like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi start acting up. Unfortunately for some Pixel and Pixel XL owners, however, this isn’t the case with the Android 8.1 update. We’re hearing quite a lot of complaints from users who say they’re not receiving incoming calls, and there are related issues making this problem even more difficult to deal with.
PiunikaWeb picked up on the growing number of complaints from Pixel and Pixel XL users. Many are saying that their phone doesn’t ring since they updated to Android 8.1. All it does is vibrate for incoming calls, although some users say that the call also appears on the screen. There’s a lengthy thread about the problem posted on Google’s product forums, while other users are posting about the issue on Twitter and in other forums.
Some Pixel and Pixel XL users dug deeper into the problem to get to the root of it. They’re finding that the Android 8.1 update is causing all of the ringtones in their phones to be reset to “none,” and the options are grayed out, which means they can’t change it. Some users are even saying that the problem goes beyond incoming calls and is even affecting their other notifications. From the forum posts about the issue, it seems like the notification sounds work sometimes but not others.
Needless to say, Google has to make fixing this incoming call problem with the Pixel and Pixel XL a priority because the Android 8.1 update has broken what should be a very basic function. The company is passing on its usual noncommittal statement to users, saying that it has passed information about the incoming call problem to its development team.
Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be a way to get around this. Some users say that they tried rebooting their phones, and that fixes the problem temporarily, but after a short time, they stop receiving incoming calls again. Google has apparently sent some Pixel and Pixel XL users refurbished devices in an attempt to fix the issue, but the replacements were doing the same thing. The company is telling some users to boot their phones in safe mode or to perform a factory reset, but these solutions don’t appear to be working either.
According to PiunikaWeb, a few users are able to receive incoming calls after turning on Bluetooth, restarting, turning off Bluetooth, and then restarting again. However, this isn’t working for everyone. Let’s just hope that Google gets on this problem immediately. Clearly, Android 8.1 is a horribly buggy update, not only for the Pixel and Pixel XL, but also for the second-generation Pixel line, which has been having camera and Wi-Fi problems. The operating system was so buggy for Samsung’s phones that the Korean firm pulled the update, so it seems like this is one update that should not have been rolled out yet.
