Forced Upgrades Suck – Android 9 bugs
I currently have a Samsung Galaxy Note9, which has been fantastic so far due to the long battery life, excellent camera and Android Auto. The other day my phone started warning me that it was going to upgrade, and I couldn’t prevent it only delay it. It was telling me how great the new Android 9 was compared to Android 8 and then one night it upgraded while I was asleep. Since then I’ve had several problems.
Major Problem #1: Call Recording
The first major problem I noticed was that my automatic call recording app no longer worked. On their main support page I found out that Android 9 no longer allows 3rd party call recording! This was a key feature that I used to take notes while driving, knowing that I could just listen to the call later so that I wouldn’t have to stop on the highway just to take notes during calls. Now I’m going to have to use a 3rd party call recording company and route all my calls through them so that I can have this functionality back!
Problem #2: Android Auto maps bug
The next thing I noticed was that Google Maps in Android Auto no longer works properly in night mode. It used to swap to dark mode at sunset and now it no longer does, leaving a BRIGHT light on my dashboard from the screen. I had to unplug the phone and forego the navigation it was so blinding.
Problem #3: Pandora bugs
The latest big problem I have is that while listening to Pandora, every other song only plays for 10s or less and then skips! While the benefit of this is now that commercials can last no longer than 10 seconds because of the error, skipping over every other song is quite annoying.
Conclusion: Users are beta testers
It seems that Google is now using everyone as beta testers for their software now. I haven’t explored that much on Android 9 and I have already found several major problems with key pieces of software. I am considering finding another phone that is version-locked to Android 8 so that I can have these features back!
3 thoughts on “Forced Upgrades Suck – Android 9 bugs”
Pandora seems to have fixed their bug. I mean of course they would, if they couldn’t play ads then they wouldn’t have a business! The other 2 bugs are still there. I discovered that my car can auto-dim the display at night so for now that is a workaround to help make it not so bad. I really would like the dark mode to work again as it does when the phone isn’t plugged into Android auto.
The auto-dark mode seems broken on Samsung phones. Someone posted about how you can manually switch it beforehand, and add that button to the top quick-menu for easier access as a workaround for now.
https://support.google.com/androidauto/thread/2482734?hl=en
This has been fixed, now night mode is something I can toggle! The only thing left is call recording, which seems that they are never going to fix due to policy change unfortunately.