My son’s blasted phone

Hey there, my tech-savvy friends, my son has an original Pixel, which he loves. However, it’s picked up an annoying glitch. When anyone calls it, the answering screen doesn’t come up. It’s physically impossible to answer it; nothing there at all. Oddly, the phone rings and vibrates, just nothing else.

Here are some key details:

  • Do Not Disturb isn’t on.
  • The phone settings screen is greyed out (I think this is significant, but not able to drill down any further).
  • He can answer calls with a bluetooth headset (tapping “answer” there).
  • I’ll check and see if Google assistant will answer the calls. Hadn’t thought of that. 
  • Recently his phone updated to Android 9/Pie (did he get Pie in the face?)

Searching Google and Bing I’ve found many folks looking for solutions to this, going back a couple of years. Otherwise, that has been remarkably fruitless. Though I found a forum where the problem was stated to be a broken codec on the motherboard, and you’ll need a new one. Amusing by not helpful.

So, anyone have any ideas? My current best guess is that this some kind of bug or conflict related to the update. Haven’t seen anything formal from the Google, so it makes me wonder if it’s on their radar. 

I’m eager for advice and counsel, oh my techie friends!

2 thoughts on “My son’s blasted phone”

  1. Hey Carl, have him back everything up, music, pics, documents, downloads, call list, text messages. Then do a factory reset. Sometimes updates can cause upsets within the os. Greyed out settings sounds like a security/administration restriction. Full factory reset.

    1. Thanks for the advice, Jod! You are in good company: a couple of friends suggested the same thing. That’s what we’ll do.

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