Google’s Pixel phones and Apple’s iPhone 7 models are fairly similar when it comes to overall design, but they also share similarly annoying bugs that can affect the audio experience. But unlike Apple, it looks like Google is taking steps to address the matter via a software issue. A few days ago, reports suggested that the Pixel’s crackling and distortion at high volume may be caused by hardware issues. Then Google officially confirmed — via Reddit, but we’ll take it — that the audio issues are related to software, which means they can be fixed with the help of an update in the future.
A customer service chat between a Pixel owner affected by the bug and Google revealed that the company is very much aware of the issue, and it’s working on a fix.
“The good news is that this is not a hardware issue but a software one,” a customer rep told the user, according to screenshots posted on Phone Arena. He also said that “Google has already identified this as a known issue and is working to resolve this and a few others as soon as possible by way of an update.”
Interestingly, the user was actually complaining of a different audio problem (marked by “this” in Google’s comment) than the widespread crackling and distortion issue (likely the “few others”). The user complained that the highest volume setting is 115% louder than the one before it when watching media, which is “frustrating when the one before it is too low but the last one is super loud.”
The Google Pixel and Pixel XL are two very popular handsets among Android fans, and it looks like some of the problems users have signaled will be soon ironed out. How soon will that be? Google didn’t say.
