According to an Android Police report, which compiles user complaints on Reddit and Google Support Forum, these features are breaking randomly without any error message. They suddenly stop working, leaving users clueless as to what has happened. A mere restart of the phone seems to solve the issue, but only temporarily. The features tend to break again sometime later. The affected Pixel 6 units are sometimes failing to read data from some sensors, the new report suggests. As a result, features that depend on those sensors are broken. For example, gyroscope and accelerometer enable features like auto-rotate and automatic horizontal photography. So when the phone stops reading data from these sensors, the features don’t work. The Pixel 6 duo aren’t reading data from compass as well, Android Police confirms. Effectively, navigation apps cannot show which direction your phone is pointing. Since the features work normally on restarting the phones, the problem isn’t in the hardware but software. The devices are sometimes failing to communicate with the sensors. Not all sensors are affected though. There’s no such issue with the light and proximity sensors as well as barometer and magnetometer.
December update for the Pixel 6 series is the culprit
Once again, it appears Pixel 6 and Pixel 6 Pro units that have installed the December patch are only running onto this problem. Of course, users that are still on the last month’s patch may also be experiencing these issues. But in that case, the latest update may have exacerbated them. Either way, issues are piling up and there’s no fix in sight. We can only hope that Google is working on it and will come up with a solution as soon as possible. Meanwhile, if you haven’t yet installed the latest update for your Pixel 6/Pixel 6 Pro, you might want to hold off for the time being. Perhaps wait until the January patch. We will keep you posted if more information emerges in the interim.
