Several owners of the second-generation Google Pixel devices have been experiencing random reboots with the handsets while connected to cellular data. The issue appears to have started late last month when users of the Google Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL began flooding the Pixel User Community page on the Google Product Forums portal with complaints about the random reboots occurring on their handsets, though the cause of the problem was initially not known to them. Thanks to one owner who was able to trace the root cause of the trouble, it now looks like an issue with the devices’ LTE modem is the culprit.
Nader Babbili took to the Pixel User Community page to share his findings about why the Pixel 2 and Pixel 2 XL devices keep on rebooting randomly over the last couple of months since the Google phones were rolled out. First off, the Pixel owner was able to solve the issue by changing the network type to 3G-only. According to the user, the problem occurred while being in an area where LTE is available but the signal is poor and that the random reboot rarely takes place when the Pixel phone is connected to a home Wi-Fi network. Once outside the Wi-Fi network area, the reboot occurs frequently at random intervals. Switching to the 3G-only network type can be done by going to the Settings of the device and then selecting the Network and Internet section, under which the Mobile Network is available which provides an option to change the preferred type of network. While this is largely the case, some Pixel owners also claimed that their phones rebooted under different circumstances that left them baffled as to why the incident took place at all.
For its part, Google has been trying to help users individually by giving instructions on how to troubleshoot the problem including factory reset and safe mode, some of which produced no useful results. Consequently, some Pixel users just received a replacement as there did not seem to be any quick solution to the problem previously. It now appears that the Mountain View, California-based internet giant is rolling out a fix to this in the form of a system update after some users contacted the company via email to report the bug. On top of the random reboot issue, many Pixel devices have also encountered audio-related problems and screen burn-in in recent times.