If you own a Google Pixel phone, then you will be the first one to be served with any major OS update. Well, that seems obvious because you are running a Google phone after all. The development of Android 11 began way back and the first Developer Preview of Android 11 arrived in February this year. And after months of testing and under the beta phase, the Android 11 stable update arrived on the Google Pixel phones, last month. And as you might expect, these were the first phones to pick up the stable version of Google’s 2020 OS, Android 11 update.
As mentioned, even though there were 3 beta updates that were pushed before this stable update, users are experiencing some connectivity issues with the stable update on their Pixel phones. Frankly, beta updates are meant to fix the bugs that are present in the updated version so that before rolling out as a stable version, the update is almost 100% free from bugs. But it seems like the connectivity issue made its way to the stable version of the update. As per user reports, as soon as users installed the Android 11 update on their Pixel phones, the issue came to light.
Notably, Google Pixel users running Android 11 are facing Bluetooth connectivity issues with their cars. This is also not allowing users to play music on their cars using Bluetooth. Well, several users have complained that due to some bug, the audio playback stops mid-way and the connection also drops for several minutes. Moreover, other users have reported that the audio stops playing once the screen of the device is locked. Some have even reported hissing or crackling sound while playing music via Bluetooth on their cars.
Here are some of the user reports:
It appears that, when connected to a car, BT music cuts off intermittently every 2-10 minutes, for about 10-30 seconds at a time.
Here’s my experience:
I updated, connected my phone to the car (Toyota Corolla, 2015, though this also happens on my wife’s 2013 CRV), started playing Spotify, and it cut out regularly usually for about 15-30 seconds at a time. I’m currently using AVRCP 1.4 and the default MAP option. Streaming codec was limited to SBC, so I couldn’t change that. Other apps behave similarly, so it’s not a Spotify issue. I’ve tried adjusting various settings in Developer Settings, but none of them have impacted the issue. I have also excluded Spotify from battery optimization, and yet the issue persists. I have also disabled Android Auto, thinking that, perhaps, it was interfering with the Bluetooth Stack.
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Updated to Android 11. Listen to music via Bluetooth on my surface earbuds. With the display it’s all fine, but as soon as the display “sleeps” the audio quality drops fast, silent breaks in music, hiss and crackles.
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I get a crackle. Music stops. Resumes after 5-10 seconds of no sound. Device says the music is still playing.
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As you might have seen and read from the user reports above, one thing is common among all of them. And that is all the issues are related to Bluetooth only. Interestingly, Google developers have a very different take on these issues. The Google developers are coining this issue as a product feature issue and not a developer issue. However, the end-users have reported getting these Bluetooth issues after installing the Android 11 update on their phones. So, the Google Pixel Android 11 Bluetooth issue may very well be a bug that is causing such problems on the Pixel devices.
There is no bug fix update as of now, that Google has released for the users. We expect Google to address the issue as soon as possible. We will keep you posted once we have any further developments in this regard.