Google is putting in all its efforts to put across its new Pixel and Pixel XL smartphones in the market as the leading and premium mobile devices.
And to accomplish this, nailing the software experience plays a huge part of this agenda. However, of late, there have been quite a few unhappy owners of the first-party smartphones from Google, who are not feeling particularly premium as much as they were supposed to be. There have been lengthy discussions at the Pixel User Community on Google’s product forum which are documenting a series of the unexplained software lockups and freezes. The most common complaint among all the users who have been a part of the discussion seems to be the complete freeze of the interface which probably has been lasting from a few seconds to several minutes, which also included the disappearance of the navigation buttons.
(A screenshot of the software freeze from forum poster Triangles – The blank Home and Recents buttons indicate the freeze).
The Support team of Google has been completely aware of the problem and is putting in all efforts to solve this issue by replying at least to a few direct support requests. However, the replies in the forum thread are meager and just a few and far between. According to the early responses on the forum, it seemed to point out that the source of this issue was Life360’s family locator, which is a third-party app. And it really seemed that it was true since many users of the app have put an end to this problem by just uninstalling the app or by disabling it. In spite of bringing a quick fix to the issue, this did not seem like an ideal solution since many users found it essential to keep the app so that they could keep track of their kids and other family members. There have nonetheless been debilitating complaints from the users who have been having awful experiences due to these undermining freezes even when they have not installed the Life360’s family locator app. So, it finally came down to the verdict that there will be multiple ways to brush with the software problem, irrespective where the issue is actually lying in.
Since the users of both the smartphones, Pixel and Pixel XL are having the same underlying concerns, it is possible that it might be a common hardware-software issue. Although it does not still seem like it is widespread, with at the most a few hundred users facing this issue, it does appear that it is happening quickly with all the Google Pixel phones. According to Android Police, as of now, apart from uninstalling or disabling the specific Life360 app, and perhaps, by even disabling the location services which all the more does not seem ideal, it does not look like there is any other better way to solve this issue.
So, if a Google Pixel or Pixel XL user is experiencing any such random software freezes, Android Police suggests dropping a thread or even better if Google’s Pixel support is contacted directly.