When it comes to post-launch support and updates, Google’s Pixel family is widely regarded as the gold standard. Even these phones, however, are occasionally plagued by faulty or defective software.
Last year, Google introduced “Hold for Me,” an exclusive function for Pixel devices that may notify you when a company eventually picks up your call.
Security patches, a slew of changes and fixes, and other upgrades to Google’s latest phones were included in the December update, which arrived days after a full Feature Drop.
Despite an initial delay, this patch arrived on phones with various issues — some so severe that Google disabled a few of capabilities on the Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro.
Google announced in a community post that Pixel 6 owners may also lose the Call Screening feature, which prevents robocallers from dialing your phone.
Affected handsets
Photo credit: Anuj Raghav | Twitter: @RaghavTechie
Hold for Me and Call Screen have both been disabled as a result of a server-side update, and will remain so until a future update hits phones, a representative on Google’s support forums confirmed.
In light of a bug in the December Android update, we are disabling Hold For Me and Call Screening on Pixel 6 devices running on Android S December QPR release (e.g. SQ1D.211205.016.A4) until we fix the underlying problems. Thanks to those of you who reported this issue.
The problem only affects Android smartphones with the build number SQ1D.211205.016.A4. To find out the build number, go to Settings > About phone > Build Number and see if it begins with SQ1D.
You should still be able to use the Hold for Me and Call Screening features if you haven’t gotten the December 2021 security update, which began rolling out last week. In the same way, previous Pixel phones are unaffected.
Our teams are actively working on resolving this issue. We will provide any updates on this post as they become available. We recommend Subscribing to this community post to be directly notified with an email update on the status of this issue.
Hold for Me was originally a US-only function that was recently added to Canada. It employs Google’s Duplex AI to detect when a live person answers the phone, saving you the agony of listening to repetitive elevator music or pre-recorded messages.
Duplex AI, which launched with the promise of automatically making restaurant reservations for you, is also used in Google’s Call Screening technology.
New security patch
The January security patch is only a few weeks away, so if a full update is required, it will almost certainly arrive alongside it.
In the meantime, if you have a Pixel 6 or 6 Pro and haven’t yet downloaded the December patch, you might want to hold off for now because this isn’t the only issue affecting these smartphones.
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