Google Pixel, Pixel XL Owners Reporting Microphone Issues
The Google Pixel and Pixel XL smartphone line was deemed one of the best of last year in terms of features and build. There have been some troubles for owners of the phone, though, as a number of reports have surfaced that some units have shipped with defective microphones. Google has since responded to the complaints by their handheld phone customers.
Brian Rakowski, the vice president of Product Management at the company, has replied to a complaint by a user posted on the phone's official support forums. The owner was complaining that the still-new device has been barely used and yet the microphone seems to have stopped functioning.
According to the user: "Received my pixel today and after a few hours of use and set up the microphone stopped working entirely, except when recording video upon which it'll record audio fine as if nothing were wrong. I factory reset the phone and the issue still persists everywhere but the camera app."
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The Product Management VP for Google has personally stepped in and generally admitted that the cause of the malfunction is a hardware issue that no user intervention can fix. Rakowski replied, according to a report by Forbes, "We do believe this is a hardware issue. You are correct that software updates will not fix it. We are taking additional steps to qualify refurbished phones to make sure they don't have this mic problem. It's possible that some replacement phones were not properly qualified before we understood this issue, but that's no longer the case."
The cause of the malfunctioning microphones was later diagnosed as a circuit break within the device. The hardware fault most likely lies with a "hairline crack in the solder connection on the audio codec." This break in the connection could explain the intermittent loss of functionality, or in some case, complete inability to record audio, of the microphones in the affected Pixel and Pixel XL units.
