A new Google-slash-Pixel-slash-Android bug has made the hot news list this week, with users reporting that the loudspeaker button in the Google Phone app is lagging or not responding at all when they tap it. Admittedly, everyone who has faced this issue is furious because it impedes one of the most basic, taken-for-granted features of a smartphone: making calls.
While this isn’t a bug I’ve noticed on my own Pixel 9 Pro XL or 10 Pro XL, it got me thinking about all the bugs that I have personally experienced on my Android phones over the last 15 or so years that I’ve been using them.
On top of that list would be a recurrent Gboard bug that sometimes causes the keyboard not to open up when I tap a text field. Tap, tap, tap — no keyboard. So I go out of the app I was using, tap the Google widget, get Gboard to pop up, then go back to my app. I’ve also had a few instances of Gboard not responding to my typing or generating some very random words when I was swiping, but those seem to be much less recurrent over the last year or so.
I guess I notice Gboard bugs much more than any others because it’s the app I use the most on my phone. Whether I’m browsing, messaging, checking social media, replying to my coworkers in Slack or Gmail, listening to music, checking out Amazon, or talking to Gemini, there’s always a form of text input, even if it’s just numbers or a quick keyword in the search box of those apps.
The worst bug I've seen is the choppy audio playback on Android 14 beta.
But, if I’m being honest, all of my Gboard “woes” don’t hold a candle to that one time I flashed the Android 14 beta on my Pixel 7 Pro. Oh, how I regretted that day. Even though it was out of Developer Preview status and into a more acceptable Beta, the Android 14 Beta was the buggiest experience I’ve ever had on Android. Yes, it’s in the name, but no other beta has ever come close to that. I’m just happy that Google fixed most of it before rolling it out to the public in a stable version.
My Pixel 7 Pro would say it had a problem charging when it was fully charged, it was freezing for no reason, and worst of all, it had this very annoying audio playback bug. Each time the phone’s display would be turned off, whatever audio I was playing (music, podcasts, voice notes from WhatsApp) would become choppy, stopping… a-and resuming at ran…dom intervals, regardless o-of whether I-I w-was on Bluetooth o……….r using the loudspeake-r. It drove me insane. Just hear for yourself:
Aaaaaaaahhhh. Even now, re-watching the video, my ears shriek and my skin crawls from the memory of that month or so where this was my entire audio experience on my Pixel 7 Pro until a subsequent beta fixed it. Sure, it was my fault for installing a beta on my primary phone, but I’d done the same thing for years, and there had never been an issue as grating as this one. Android betas had often been relatively stable in my experience.
After this, though? I learned my lesson. Any beta goes on a secondary phone now. Never again, Google. Never again.
But I want to hear your horrible bug stories now. Tell me: What’s the worst bug you remember coming across on Android?
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