Note that Google is no longer providing updates (/maybe/ one more in 22Q1) for the OP's Pixel 3, a 3yo device which is otherwise still a great phone. It's simply not good enough. Google needs to support their own phone past three years and be the example to others that ship Android devices. How long are we going to ignore it and let those who can't afford a new phone every couple of years be left exposed?

Looks like it's only impacting phones from 2019 onwards and in very specific circumstances (still not great at all but a very specific bug):

If you are unsure what Android version you are on, confirm you are running Android 10 or above by following the steps here. If you are not running Android 10 or above, you are not impacted by this issue.

You are also not impacted if you have teams installed and are signed in:

If you have the Microsoft Teams app downloaded, check to see if you are signed in. If you have been signed in, you are not impacted by this issue, and we suggest you remain signed in until you’ve received the Microsoft Teams app update.

If you have the Microsoft Teams app downloaded, but are not signed in, uninstall and reinstall the app. While this will address the problem in the interim, a Microsoft Teams app update is still required to fully resolve the issue.

We advise users to keep an eye out for an update to the Microsoft Teams app, and ensure it is applied as soon as available. We will update this post once the new version of Microsoft Teams is available to 100% of users.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GooglePixel/comments/r4xz1f/pixel_p...

That we know of. If Teams can cause this, surely other apps can also. Moreover, who's to say there isn't a much larger number of people who've been affected by this bug that haven't reach out to Google to file a complaint and bug report. (Or couldn't, possibly because they died while trying to call emergency services.)

This isn't the first time I've heard this complaint.

Maybe I'm missing something, but it doesn't sound like it's _that_ specific. From the instructions, the conditions for the bug are:

1. Running Android 10 or higher

2. Has MS Teams installed

3. User is logged out of MS Teams

4. User hasn't reinstalled MS Teams _in a while_ (or perhaps they installed MS Teams in a particular time window in the past)

1-3 seem like fairly weak filters. Unless 4 is a particularly strong filter, this sounds like it would affect a bunch of people.

The thing is, it's clearly not as simple as "Has MS Teams installed", I mean the bug itself is not due to one specific piece of software, but rather that software advertising itself to the OS in a certain way.

Making a call to emergency services shouldn't be able to fail on hardware with a mobile phone modem. If Android allows apps to provide the capability to do that, then the OS must take responsibility for the app actually being able to do so, if the dialer tries to call an emergency services number, and whatever app is prioritised to take care of that fails, then the next one in line needs to be called upon, until we hit Android core functionality which they have verified beforehand can actually perform the task (given that there is a mobile phone modem on the platform in question, but perhaps this could be done over the internet as well, in which case that isn't even a requirement).

Blaming this on shitty code by a third party is not acceptable.

> Blaming this on shitty code by a third party is not acceptable.

Sure, but I wasn't doing that.

Not you, Google, in their reply on the linked reddit thread.

Imagine if Ma Bell said they're no longer supporting your touch-tone phone because it's more than 3 years old, so 911 calls aren't guaranteed.

How did this ever become acceptable?

> Google needs to support their own phone past three years

It's not really Google's choice. Qualcomm gives up on their SOCs pretty quickly and unlike on Linux Android's license doesn't force them to publish driver sources.

You don't think Google could demand driver sources for the harware they use or use hardware with driver sources available? It is their choice.

Sure they could but they wouldn't get them. Not for release and without that they are useless.

And how many more years did they give people on the Google SOC?

Isn't the workaround to uninstall Teams?

I suspect millions of Android/Teams users will never hear of this bug. They won't realize there's action they could take.

And what if there is another app that causes the same bug? Teams doesn’t have any special permissions so one has to assume there are more apps out there that could be a problem.

> teams doesn't have any special permissions

Is that really true though?

Scrolling through the permission list on teams, there's a whole bunch I don't usually expect on most apps, ie. "Route calls through the system" (id imagine this is the one needed to implement voip service on top of android).

And it gets even worse for apps that can create corporate profiles so they can be administratively controlled remotely by the corp. That's next level of permission bs one has to give up to.

I do get your point that they’re uncommon requirements but my point was Teams doesn’t any uniquely granted permissions that Google have backdoored for Microsoft. So it is entirely possible that another app / VoIP client (or even malicious actor) could prevent emergency calls.

This is what I am reading also. Couple that with another similar and recent bug discussed in the reddit thread this links to (https://www.androidpolice.com/notifications-feeling-sluggish...) and I'm starting to wonder if there isn't a whole host of unnoticed side effects in peoples Android devices.

These are failures on the Android level, apps users can download from the store shouldn't have the capability to break things like calling emergency services, or notifications for other apps.

And that's not a standard permission, have to go to All Permissions to see it, and I don't see a way to remove that permission, or find all apps that have it

trying to avoid the trap you speak of: I've submitted a case to my corporate technology department with the permalink to Google's Reddit reply partly so the enterprise can't say they knew nothing about this defect (and I cc: my manager).

Then Google should ban the app from play store and auto-delete it from phones until MS fixes it.

Because of a bug in Android? Great suggestion.

If that's the only solution/workaround, I guess Teams should be banned from Play Store and existing Teams app automatically disabled or uninstalled next time a user pings Play Store.

In any case, it's Google that is responsible to fix the mess caused by broken sandboxing of their OS.

I’d now be worried that 911 won’t work with other dialers either. Calls to 911 should probably always be handled by some first-party dialer since it’s not reasonable for everyone to test if their specific installation will be able to call 911.

No, to uninstall and reinstall.