Earlier in the year, numerous Google Pixel and Pixel XL owners reported an issue which seemed to cause Bluetooth to switch off at random times. Some users reported that the problem emerged following the launch of Google’s security patch for February, while others reported that the issue was present without the aforementioned patch. In either case, last week a Pixel User Community administrator told Pixel smartphone users that Google has finished putting a fix in place at their end. Although, it appears that there are still numerous Pixel users who are still affected by the bug.
Interestingly enough, the fix mentioned last week by the Community administrator didn’t seem to require any downloads or software/app updates. Instead, the fix was reportedly set in place at Google’s end, server-side, which seems to have raised more questions than before, due to the fact that Bluetooth connects locally to other Bluetooth enabled devices, and does not connect to an outside server. On the other hand, the fix may have been applied server-side to the Pixel Launcher or other Google services which may have indirectly caused the Bluetooth issues, and this could be the reason why the administrator mentioned that no app updates are required in order for the fix to take place. Either way, sadly the server-side fix doesn’t seem to have cleared the problem for everyone, with a number of users still reporting on their Bluetooth-related issues. One user, in particular, stated that the server-side fix did not help at all and that it only worsened the situation as the ‘reboot temporary fix’ no longer seems to bring Bluetooth connectivity back on. Of course, this could only be a coincidence and may be unrelated with Google’s apparent fix.
Other users have reported that they have managed to fix the problem after updating the ‘Carrier Services’ application from the Play Store, but given that not every Google Pixel owner has the respective app installed on their phone, this too could be another coincidence. Whatever the case, Google is looking into the problem for users who are still experiencing Bluetooth connectivity issues on their Pixel smartphones, and hopefully, a widespread fix will soon be distributed to all affected customers.