Google Pixel's most dangerous bug: failing to call 911
28 comments
·October 24, 2025alphabettsy
This keeps happening.
2022: https://www.xda-developers.com/google-pixel-3-update-emergen...
Gigachad
It’s been a constant issue in Australia recently. The 3G network shut down and it turns out a lot of phones were using 3G exclusively for emergency calls. As well as various network operator bugs.
Emergency calls being their own system which rarely gets tested by users is becoming a real issue.
jarofgreen
> There have been reports from iPhone or Samsung users facing a similar problem, and that's despite their significantly higher user base.
Is there a "no" missing?
tom_alexander
I have the opposite problem with pixels: they keep trying to call 911 on their own. On the past couple Pixel phones I've had, the power button started to click itself on its own and ignoring my presses. Turns out Google, in their infinite wisdom, made rapidly clicking the power button into a shortcut for calling 911.
Terr_
Last I checked there was an option to require screen interaction in addition to the side-button.
diordiderot
I believe if you wait X seconds it puts the call through
vel0city
What tripped me up the one time I really needed to call 911 on a Pixel was it auto-sends the call after the second 1. Any other call, you dial the number, 555-555-5555, then press the green phone button to send the call. Dialing 911, it instantly starts calling, and the send button changes to hangup.
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.
rkagerer
Dialing 911, it instantly starts calling, and the send button changes to hangup.
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.
sunaookami
The constant A/B tests in Google apps like the Play Store drives me nuts. Buttons constantly changing around which is equal to being gaslit because you are wondering whether you just misremembered where the button was.
gdulli
I know it sounds counterintuitive, but I regularly get the feeling that Google doesn't dogfood its products.
thegrim33
For many years I used the stock Android alarm clock and couldn't believe how it was designed.
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.
Terr_
They also removed swiping, so that you have to tap a button, and it's throwing me off.
dingaling
The alarm on / off toggle buttons on the Clock -> Alarm screen also have a tiny hit-zone and if you miss it kindly opens a screen for you to adjust the alarm time. Hit back, try again, miss again...
I just want to turn my alarm off for a lie-in and I have to play button-sniper.
jayknight
Volume buttons have snoozed alarms in every phone I've ever had. I can find those by feel.
nytesky
Interesting. On my iPhone the in-call mode moves the hangup button down a slot.
jerlam
Changing how a normal process works in a rare emergency in order to save a single second, but introducing a potentially dangerous amount of confusion, seems like a terrible design.
Cpoll
It doesn't even need to be a tradeoff. Call immediately, but require a double or triple press to hang up (to account for accidental dialing; a user will naturally tap multiple times until it hangs up).
andrewinardeer
I think it would be okay if it was a highlighted feature shown to the user during set up or a dismissible notification every month or so instead of a surprise when calling.
krackers
I hope you're joking, the last thing I want is pop-ups in my phone app. If the issue being solved is someone "forgetting" to press dial in a panic after entering 911 (which seems unlikely given that this is muscle memory ingrained into everyone), there's probably better ways to do the same thing. You could only auto-dial if someone holds up the phone to the ear. After a few seconds you could vibrate the phone and draw more attention to the dial button. Anything that doesn't break the usual muscle-memory flow.
interloxia
They could add it to the WiFi calling warning notification that emergency calls are unavailable. It even has a do not show again button that fails to dismiss or prevent the notification.
pengaru
"the idiots are taking over" - NOFX
mikigraf
CarPlay has a similar issue where it won’t call a contact
vunderba
As an aside, I really liked my Google Nexus 5x, but it felt like basic quality control fell off a cliff for the Pixel line.
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.
mikodin
> and my absolute favorite making a call which would dial the number and then about a second later immediately hang up.
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)
null
dmitrygr
This is why I forcefully moved my family to iPhone. Preferences be damned. I need to know that in an emergency, 911 will work for them. Google is unserious about phones. Always have been.
casey2
not-a-bug: Saves more lives in the long run
Those silly humans really should separate the police from their emergency services
It's ok guys, I'm on it. I filed a support ticket with Google a couple years ago, and I'm sure they are just busy and will get back to me soon. I am a paid subscriber, after all.