It has all the characteristics of a bug that you can just feel in your bones will never get fixed:

* Intermittent.

* Affects only some users.

* Possible link to a hardware problem

* Vendor track record of only putting serious effort into development of new products, not maintenance of existing products.

That’s some weighty inertia to overcome, but maybe the prospect of legal liability will manage it.

I don’t know enough about the emergency service requirements but it sounds like the issue is in the data Google are trying to query before connecting the call.

They likely have a blocking function somewhere that they should be running concurrently or falling back to a cache after a timeout.

Given how widespread this is in the comments on Reddit , I’m sure they must have enough user logs to pinpoint it.

This is making me furious. I do not think I have ever called 911, but it is one of those safety features I thought I could fully expect to work when needed.

I have only ever used Android, but this is going to be my final such device. I have accepted a lot of rough edges over the years, but this wilful negligence regarding safety features is where I am drawing the line. At least with Apple I will not have to hope that maintaining Emergency Services will get someone promoted.

It also is very weird that this bug even made it to production once because the standards explicitly require phone to call emergency services even if no SIM card is present.