Google’s in-house smartphones, the Pixel and the Pixel XL have been well received. The handsets not only provide the best Android experience but also come with one of the best smartphone cameras.
However, the smartphones have not been perfect. Back in January we heard about an issue where certain Pixel and Pixel XL owners had complained about bad speaker performance with crackling noise. The issue was thankfully resolved as it was a software issue, rather than a hardware issue, which was fixed via a software update.
Now a new issue has turned up which could be a more serious issue. Certain Google Pixel owners have shown concern on Reddit and Google’s support forums saying that their units are having trouble with the microphone. The unresponsive microphone is a rather serious issue as users are unable to make phone calls.
Following the numerous complaints, Brian Rakowski from Google joined the discussion and confirmed that there is an issue and is probably hardware related. It was likely caused by a crack in the solder connection on the audio codec.
Rakowski further said “It’s possible that some replacement phones were not properly qualified before we understood this issue, but that’s no longer the case, additional steps to reinforce the connection at time of manufacture on phones built since January.”
So basically a software update is not an option anymore. Google will replace the faulty units and is taking steps to make sure that replacement units don’t have any similar issues.