14 DAY TRIAL // Last month, we told you about Mark Buckman who discovered that Pixel smartphones may have some serious audio issues. He posted a video showing that audio was severely distorted on Pixel smartphones when playing the “Perfect Piano” keyboard app at the highest volume level.
The issue was found on Pixel and Pixel XL phones, but not on Motorola’s Nexus 6 model, suggesting that the problem was only affecting the latest phones released by Google. Mark Buckman received five replacement Pixel XL phones and found the issue to be present on all of them.
Later, Google contacted Buckman and offered a resolution to his complaint. The tech giant decided to offer him a full refund with the return of his Pixel XL phone. This means that Google acknowledged the problem, which can’t be solved via a software update.
Warranty replacement claims for affected Pixel phones
The confirmation came recently on Reddit, where a user posted an email in which Google admits that the issue is hardware related. The audio problem affects a select build of devices and according to the email, Google doesn’t intend to offer refunds for this particular issue. Google did say that customers could file a claim for a warranty replacement for their affected devices.
There’s another way that Pixel owners can go about this issue, as Mark Buckman said he found a workaround for the problem. The method requires skills for flashing custom ROMs on rooted Android devices. You will need to unlock the bootloader, install the TWRP recovery image, and flash the WETA audio ROM in order to get rid of the distorted audio output.
It’s worth mentioning that users should pick the method for solving this issue carefully, as flashing custom ROMs on phones could result in loss of warranty, so they might not be able to put in a claim with Google for a warranty replacement afterward.