Photo: Google
While Android 11 did bring a series of welcome improvements for everybody, it also introduced several critical bugs on Android Auto, and one of them concerns phone calls.
Shortly after Google released Android 11 to the very first batch of phones, users started reporting issues with making calls from their cars when Android Auto was running on the screen.
Most of them complained that using voice input to request Google Assistant to start a call to a specific contact just returned them to the previous screen, with some explaining that the whole thing only worked when their devices were unlocked.
Needless to say, unlocking the phone while driving just to make a phone call isn’t really the most convenient and recommended workaround, but the good thing is that Google has already looked into the problem and figured out what’s causing it.
So the company has recently confirmed that the next Android Auto update would include a fix for this problem, only that an ETA is currently unavailable. In other words, a future version of Android Auto will indeed resolve this bug, but right now, nobody knows when this release is projected to go live.
“Our team has prepared a fix for this issue, we will announce the timelines soon, for the meantime please use the workaround we shared,” a member of the Android Auto team says.
The good news is that a workaround has already been discovered, and by the looks of things, it all comes down to disabling the screensaver on a device updated to Android 11.
“For further investigation of the issue, we want to confirm if you have the Screen Saver settings enabled on the device. If yes, try turning screensaver off in Settings > Display > Advanced > Screen saver. Then ‘When to start’ should be set to ‘Never,’” an Android Auto community specialist said last week.
Google is expected to release a new Android Auto update sometime this week, but it remains to be seen if a fix for this issue is part of it or not.
Most of them complained that using voice input to request Google Assistant to start a call to a specific contact just returned them to the previous screen, with some explaining that the whole thing only worked when their devices were unlocked.
Needless to say, unlocking the phone while driving just to make a phone call isn’t really the most convenient and recommended workaround, but the good thing is that Google has already looked into the problem and figured out what’s causing it.
So the company has recently confirmed that the next Android Auto update would include a fix for this problem, only that an ETA is currently unavailable. In other words, a future version of Android Auto will indeed resolve this bug, but right now, nobody knows when this release is projected to go live.
“Our team has prepared a fix for this issue, we will announce the timelines soon, for the meantime please use the workaround we shared,” a member of the Android Auto team says.
The good news is that a workaround has already been discovered, and by the looks of things, it all comes down to disabling the screensaver on a device updated to Android 11.
“For further investigation of the issue, we want to confirm if you have the Screen Saver settings enabled on the device. If yes, try turning screensaver off in Settings > Display > Advanced > Screen saver. Then ‘When to start’ should be set to ‘Never,’” an Android Auto community specialist said last week.
Google is expected to release a new Android Auto update sometime this week, but it remains to be seen if a fix for this issue is part of it or not.
Google News