Related Articles
The only-just-released Samsung Galaxy Nexus is suffering from a bug that causes the volume on the phone to spontaneously drop, infuriating owners.
It’s unclear right now exactly how widespread the issue is, but the glitch certainly affected the Galaxy Nexus we used for our review (up later today, review fans!), to such a degree that making calls was almost impossible.
We’ve seen a huge number of complaints online, including a Google issues board and on Samsung UK’s Facebook page. One owner has uploaded a video to YouTube demonstrating the problem.
Android forum XDA Developers has been collecting information from Galaxy Nexus owners on the bug, and early analysis suggests the volume bug only affects the phone while it’s on a 2G connection, and seemingly only affects models that use 900MHz for 2G coverage.
Unfortunately that includes those sold in most of Europe, including the UK. You can tell when the Galaxy Nexus is using a 2G connection because it shows a little ‘G’ icon meaning GPRS, or ‘E’ for Edge.
The issue means the Galaxy Nexus could suddenly go silent without warning, meaning you miss texts or other notifications. The volume can also drop out while you’re making a call, silencing the people you’re talking to and making the art of conversation somewhat more tricky.
We’ve also experienced the volume key becoming unresponsive and the power button being affected too, meaning we couldn’t lock the phone.
It’s certainly possible this issue could be fixed with a software update, though when we can expect that is anyone’s guess. So far we’ve seen no response from Samsung — we’ve reached out to the company for a comment and we’ll let you know when we hear something.
In the meantime, we’ve factored this glitch into our in-depth review of the Galaxy Nexus, which will be going live today.
Is your brand-new Galaxy Nexus affected? Does this glitch put you off buying one? Let us know in the comments below, on our Facebook wall or over on our Google+ page.
Update 2 December: Google has pushed out an official update that fixes the bug, and we’ve amended our Samsung Galaxy Nexus review to reflect this.
