About a week ago, we reported that Google’s Take a Message feature wasn’t working right on some Pixel phones. With the Take a Message feature active, callers would be able to hear audio from the other end, which is quite alarming. As you can imagine, this caused quite an uproar with users, and Google started looking into the problem to see how and why this is possible.
Google has now chimed in, sharing that this problem is indeed real, and it does affect older Pixel devices (via 9to5Google). As you can imagine, privacy concerns are a huge issue, so for the time being, Google is disabling the Take a Message and Call Screen features on the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4.
It’s not clear what’s going on
Despite Google acknowledging that there is an issue with Take a Message, the brand hasn’t explained what’s going on. In its support message, the brand does state that “a very small subset of Pixel 4 and 5 devices under very specific and rare circumstances” have an issue.
The good news is that if you own these phones, you don’t have to do anything for now in order to keep yourself safe. However, it is a bit strange that Google hasn’t laid out what’s going on, so users will be in the know. There is a chance that it doesn’t fully understand everything that’s happening, so maybe in the future it will be a bit more clear.
This isn’t the first time
This is the first time Google has run into issues with its software. We’ve seen plenty of issues in the past, and it usually does a pretty good job of fixing them. However, it rarely provides a timeline and just magically announces a fix for the problem when it is available.
No doubt, this will be much of the same. While Google has reported disabling the Take a Message feature on the Pixel 5 and Pixel 4, there were some reports initially that this was also happening on the Pixel 10. But judging from Google’s response, the problem must only be occurring on its older devices.
Google has done a pretty good job of making the Pixel series a phone that competes with other flagship competitors. The Pixel 10 Pro XL is our favorite phone so far, but it’s a new year, which means new phones, and a chance for Google to get dethroned as our top pick.
