It has been reported that Google Pixel users are randomly experiencing their phones freezing, becoming unresponsive for anywhere from a few seconds to a couple of minutes. This first arose in November, according to the Pixel User Community on the Google Product Forums, and has been happening since.
We’ve actually experienced this too, but hadn’t attributed it to a wider problem until reading of this in a few other places. The issue arises essentially at random, and the Pixel will become almost completely unresponsive. The on-screen buttons for back, home and multi-tasking do nothing, the power button will usually turn the display off and back on, but it doesn’t lock, and the volume keys sometimes work, and sometimes do nothing. I’ve noticed this probably three or four times in the last month or so, and while most times it resolves fairly quickly – less than 30 seconds – the longest was over a minute, and showed no signs of un-freezing, so I rebooted the phone with the key combination.
Some users have attributed this to particular apps; it was believed that the Live360 Family Locator was one culprit, but just as many have had the issue without using this app (I’m in this boat, never installed it). It seems that it’s not an app issue, but something more general. The impression I had was that the phone had run out of free RAM and seized up, but that seems fairly implausible these days.
Have you noticed this issue on your Pixel? From what we understand, the issue is not widespread, and even though it’s annoying, it doesn’t happen anywhere near often enough for me to consider replacing the Pixel with anything else.
Let us know in the comments if you’ve been affected.
